


Lonely is the Knight

by acogna



Series: Heart of Vengeance [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DC Extended Universe
Genre: Exes to Lovers, F/M, Gen, Mystery, Unresolved Sexual Tension, it's gonna be One Of Those Stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-02-08 19:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 50,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12871170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acogna/pseuds/acogna
Summary: When a familiar cat burglar returns to Gotham after ten years of absence, it doesn't go unnoticed. And while a certain masked vigilante billionaire would rather much deny the effect she has on him, there is a hidden enemy in the shadows that will jump at the chance to use her against him, and expose the human side of an otherwise inhuman being.DCEU take on BatCat, post-Justice League. Will include story elements fromHushandHeart of Hush.





	1. All Paid Jobs Absorb and Degrade the Mind

**Author's Note:**

> Just know that this ship now owns my ass. This is my first segue into DC and its fandom, so feedback, both good and bad, is heavily appreciated.
> 
> This fic is DCEU based, meaning that I’m writing this viewing Ben Affleck as Batman, with my image for Selina being actress Morena Baccarin. Like I said before, the story also starts at approximately a couple of months after the events of _Justice League._ I wouldn’t consider this my take on the upcoming Batman movie (to be directed by Matt Reeves), but consider it a hypothetical sequel to that hypothetical movie. I also wouldn’t consider this fic much of a love story, even though love is the central theme; more like an action-adventure that just happens to put romance at the very center of attention.
> 
> In totality, the plot takes a lot of inspiration from some comics like _Hush_ and largely on _Heart of Hush._ Some story elements from Telltale’s _The Wolf Among Us_ and their take on Batman are also included. As you read, there will be some parts that are rather familiar to you if you’ve ever been exposed to the titles I just mentioned. 
> 
> To get the noir feeling that I wanted for the story, I watched _a crapton_ of noir films, Humphery Bogart, and Alfred Hitchcock, and I’m trying out a new writing style, since this is the first time I’ve ever written _an entire fic_ in the present tense. It’s also has a significantly shorter word count than most of my stories, for the noir feel I’m going for.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A curious arrival. A murdered woman. A heist gone wrong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But what are the essentials of film noir? Three things: the hard-boiled world-weary detective who takes no shit, the gruesome and mysterious murder that sets the plot rolling, and the illusive and enchanting _femme fatale_ who may be our tragic hero's demise. 
> 
> And that's how we'll open.

The airport isn't a kind place to strangers. Bustling and pushy crowds, all from different sides of the world, speaking in strange accents and noticeable in even stranger mannerisms. Flowing with the crowd should be easy when everyone's a new brand of diverse, but she's the opposite case. Even as she descends from her plane to the cacophonic mess of Archie Goodwin International Airport, the black of her outfit and clicks of her heels calls heads to turn to her, try as she might to blend in.

She's a sight for passers-by to hook onto as she waits in front of the luggage conveyer belt, her watchful eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses, a lithe body shape concealed in the most fashionable of dim coats, her wide-brimmed hat hiding in shadow what many would consider a pretty face. And since it's human nature to be attracted to something you don't fully understand, people can't help but be fascinated by the mystery that surrounds her. With her black leather purse slung around her arm, she waits between the other passengers around the conveyer belt, spewing out boxes and luggage bags from her ten-hour flight.

She doesn't know how long she'd been standing there until she spots her black luggage back emerge from the conveyer. But before even before she takes five steps in its direction, a man swoops in and takes it by the handle, placing it down on the floor in front of her. To get a better look at the stranger's face, she pushes her sunglasses lower along the bridge of her nose, a sly smile on her blood red lips.

"My, my," she drawls, "and here I thought chivalry was dead."

"It isn't while women like you exist," the man returns, with a voice that probably makes him look more suave than he usually is.

He strikes quite the figure, she can admit: tussled hair, tamed beard, crisp jawline, and striking eyes. Handsome at a glance, even more charming the more time spent around him. He holds out a well-sculpted hand, she takes it with her own gloved fingers.

"Doctor Loris Tate," he introduces himself, and the widening of her eyes doesn't shock him.

"Did I hear that right?" she asks, her head tilting and curiosity heightening. "You've just made yourself much more interesting, Doctor Tate. Catherina Dolores; a true pleasure."

"So," he begins, looking behind at a bright sign with her flight number and from where it came: Florence, Italy. "You Italian?"

 _"Conosco la lingua,"_  she says, her tongue accustomed to the long consonants and singing vowels. "I've only stayed a few months for a change in scenery. Girls like me love to be adventurous."

"I can tell," he smirks, scanning her from head to foot as they begin to walk to the arrivals dock, with him carrying her baggage in one hand and his own small travel backpack in the other. "And the new change in scenery you had in mind was Gotham City?"

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

He shrugs, suddenly aware of the direction the conversation is tipping towards: not in his favor. "It's not, but this city doesn't have the most spotless reputation. This your first time visiting?"

She shakes her head. "Actually, quite the opposite. Gotham born and raised."

"Isn't that something?" his smile grows. "Lived your whole life here too? You just keep finding Gothamites on every country in the world now."

She turns her head to see from where his flight came from, and she spots the conveyer on the far left. "You've come quite a distance too."

He gives off a playful scoff. "Chicago isn't as far as Florence."

"Just means that Gotham has a charm that keeps people coming back, doesn't it?"

"That or the people in it."

There's a ghost of a smile on her face, as if she was reminiscing something. "I can agree with you there."

He notices the sentimentality in her voice and clears his throat. "So, why'd you come back?"

She seems to hesitate, but her composure is quicker than his tongue. "I have some unfinished business here." Her sly smile grows. "Does a certain handsome doctor have unfinished business here too?"

His cheeks grow red, but he tries his best to remain unfazed. "You could say that. I'm here to see if my family's doing well."

"Must be quite the family, raising a charming little boy like you."

His face completely flushes. "You flatter me too much, Catherina."

Just as he says that, they exit the arrival hall and are greeted by the warmth of the dusty and strong-scented air, taken aback by cabs and private vehicles along the road come to pick passengers up. The sun above them shines mercilessly on the large and tattered expanse of towers and shanties in the distance, floating along the waters of the harbour: Gotham City.

"Well, we best be going," she says, taking the suitcase from him. "It's been fun, but we're both here to do our unfinished businesses. It would be a sin to keep you from that."

He looks sheepish, kind of adorable. "But can't I get your number, at least? Quite a pity the conversation has to end this early, when it was just getting good."

"Oh, don't you worry," she begins sauntering away, her hips swaying as she removes her shades to reveal emerald green eyes shining beneath the shadows of her hat. "You'll find my number in the pocket where you keep your wallet.  _Arrivederci, Dottore!"_

He doesn't want to question how she knows where his wallet is being kept; despite that, he reaches into his jacket pocket, then the shock overtakes him once he realizes the bulge of his money is missing. He digs further into it, his dread increasing as he learns there's nothing, save for a small note in a scratchy handwriting akin to a cat's claw marks:

'My number's 9, it's how many lives I have!'

A pickpocket.

When his panic settles in and rage replaces it, he looks around to confront the culprit, but Catherina Dolores had already disappeared from the airport crowd. When he asks around if any of the people ever saw a woman in black matching her description, they would deny ever even noticing such an elusive creature. It's as if she had never existed.

* * *

The night wind whips around the cold wet streets of the East End, making Commissioner Gordon's trench coat billow around him like a cape. But instead of standing mysteriously on a cornice of a tall distant building overlooking the cityscape (like a certain man he knows), he's standing in the middle of police sirens, distressed officers, nosy news reporters, and police tape.

It's less cinematic than he thinks it to be.

Lieutenant O'Hara comes walking towards him as he smothers another cigarette on the asphalt. She's come from the crime scene, he can see it in her face; he'd only seen it once and didn't need to see it again. The apartment where the poor girl was murdered had the walls splattered with bits of her blood, her own body lying in a pool of broken bones and torn flesh in the middle of the living room, where the neighbors found her. They were supposed to report sound complaints to the GCPD; little did they know that those sounds were the screams of a dying citizen.

"We've identified the girl," O'Hara says matter-of-factly, as she should when discussing crime details.

"That took a while," Gordon comments as he takes the folder O'Hara hands to him.

"Hard to do it with her face bashed in and her fingerprints nearly sanded off," O'Hara replies, and Gordon can hear her try to supress a shiver.

As he opens the folder, he's met with the dossier of another young Gothamite lost to the never-ending war on crime. Her picture looks at him blankly, her eyes still full of many years she should have used living. Gordon can only sigh in exhaustion as O'Hara continues.

"Clarissa Walker, age twenty-three," O'Hara seems resigned now, even as she doesn't mention how these murder victims keep getting younger and younger. "Cause of death could be anywhere between fractured skull or stab wounds in the torso."

Gordon closes her dossier and hands it back to O'Hara; he can't look at another victim's face anymore. "Get her body to the morgue for someone to claim. And update her record as deceased."

"Got it, Sir."

"Any updates on the husband?"

O'Hara nods. "He claims to be the one who murdered her. Might be circumstantial, but the blood splatters on his clothes do match everything else in the crime scene. He's handcuffed, waiting in one of the cars."

Gordon pulls out another cigarette and puts it between his lips, clicking his lighter and spewing out a first exhale of smoke. "He got a name?"

"Matthew Walker, age forty from what database analysis managed to share with me."

Gordon nearly chokes on his smoke at the mention of his age. "Forty?"

O'Hara gives a wry grin. "That's all they've told me, Sir."

He takes a drag on the cigarette. "Well, damn. What a helluva night this turned out to be."

O'Hara shifts uneasy, putting her hands on hips as she stares at the apartment building now sealed off by GCPD, and the few amounts of reporters trying to get their exclusive from witnesses shooed away from their good-night's rest. The police tape encasing them doesn't even seem real anymore.

"You think we should call him on the case, Sir?" O'Hara suddenly asks.

The one syllable escapes the Commissioner with some smoke. "Who?"

She looks at him expectantly, as if he's supposed to know what she's insinuating. Soon he gets the idea, and gives a shrug.

"PD doesn't answer to him, I hope you know that," Gordon clarifies. "He isn't some superior we just give information to all willy-nilly."

"And yet you trust him."

Gordon shoots her a tired look, the kind you give to a snarky daughter. "The man has a fucking car that goes at two hundred miles an hour and he can beat Falcone's entire warehouse gang in hand-to-hand if he's having a good day. If he's willing to help us, I'm not backing down on that chance."

"So you hesitate to call him now because…?"

"He works on the huge cases: drug cartels, mob wars, the Joker. This is just some domestic killing that we can solve in days."

O'Hara crosses her arms. "And you're still gonna try."

Gordon accepts his defeat with a sigh. "Yeah, I'm still gonna try."

"Tonight?"

"No, tonight's too soon. He'll be expecting some information on our part, and we don't have much of that right now." He looks up into the night sky. "Besides…knowing him, I think he's busy right about now."

* * *

Bryant Industries HQ is a marvel of a skyscraper, rivalling the brilliant architecture and imposing air of Wayne Tower itself. Against the night sky, its lights seem to look like stars. But as it's located in Gotham City, it's bound to be the victim of some sort of crime at one point in time.

And tonight is that particular one point in time.

An exact number of half a dozen armed and masked goons manage to get past the initial security by beating them unconscious, and destroy all CCTV cameras going up to the CEO's office on the 72nd floor. It's all amateur tactics, even to the supermarket plastic masks used to conceal their faces and machine guns from Falcone; obviously they're inexperienced, and it's commendable that they went for a huge corporation on their first hit like Bryant Industries instead of some small bank along the street. Brave in a way, but still stupid for attracting the wrong kind of attention.

Finally, they reach the CEO's office, hidden behind a safe code. The hacker of the six of them proceeds to try and break the system without the security alarms blaring. While one stands guard of him, the other four go out to scope the floor for any security cameras to take out or any potential threats to remove.

And that's when they begin to disappear.

The first one walks into a conference room and destroys the CCTV, closing the blinds of the windows from the night lights of Gotham. That's when a figure from the shadows lunges toward him, and his radio signal goes dead.

The second one walks into the secretary's cubicle, searching for any valuables the assistant could have left behind to claim for his own on the table tops and in the drawers. But a looming dread is felt behind him, and his radio signal goes dead.

The third and fourth enter the extensive pantry, opening the cabinets to try and find anything other than instant noodles and pastries. The third notices a blinking red light landing in the middle of the room, and before he could even take a step closer to investigate it, the room erupts in smoke. In an instant too fast for them to even comprehend, the darkness seems to expand, and both their radio signals go dead.

The fifth, guarding the hacker in the middle of the CEO's lobby, hears the radios of his comrades flat-lining from his own device as he tries to switch to them. "They're gone."

The hacker doesn't turn to him. "What?"

"The others," the fifth clarifies, facing him. "Their comms are dead."

"Well, go check it out then," the hacker retorts as he opens the panel of the keypad, already annoyed.

The fifth is apprehensive. "Yeah, but—"

"C'mon, man, don't be such a baby. I need to focus."

The fifth goes out into the darkness, the flashlight attached to his AK-47 quivering in fear. And just as quickly and swiftly, a specter from above descends upon him, and a sickening thud of a skull hitting the concrete echoes through the whole floor. The light disappears.

The hacker stops what he's doing and looks up from the opened keypad. The building is deadly quiet, with no noise except that of his own ragged breathing. But the uneasy tranquillity is interrupted suddenly by a strike on the CEO's door. Despite all intuition in him telling him not to investigate, he gets up anyway and walks slowly towards the sound. And to his shock and dread, he finds wedged right in the middle of the wooden door a metal projectile shaped like a bat.

The hacker turns around to get the hell out while he can. "Oh, sh—"

But he can't move before he gets a huge kick to the face, slamming his head into the doors and breaking it wide open, rendering the security system useless. Before he could even get up, the darkness grabs his shirt collar and lifts him from the floor, making his eyes lock with that of the gloom.

He's face-to-face with the Dark Knight.

Without a second to breathe, the hacker is thrown at the CEO's table, his back coming into direct contact to the edge of the desk and sending pain straight up his neck and back. Because of the ache coursing through his body and the fear that shakes his psyche, he doesn't get up; but despite himself, he still thinks he has a chance and tries to reach for his gun. But the shadow kicks it away and grinds its heel on his hand, hard, making him yell and writhe in agony as his wrist is broken into little pieces.

"Too ambitious," the metallic synthetic voice growls, and the hacker winces, now useless.

After handcuffing the hacker to the desk, the wraith scans his surroundings, not a pin out of place. Walking along the room, he notices the CEO's desk in too pristine a condition. Going through the drawers proves nothing either, but as he notices the sudden draft upon standing directly under it, his head shoots up, and the skylight had been broken into, cut into a perfect circle with incredible precision.

With a shot of his grappling gun, he zips up to the roof and lands flawlessly on the uncut skylight glass. Surrounded by the cold crisp air of Gotham's atmosphere, his cape whipping around him, further encasing him in the dark of the night, his vigilant eyes catch the attention of a figure running not too far from where he stands, dashing fast enough to be considered guilty.

It doesn't take too long for him to catch up to the fleeing criminal. After jumps over the buttresses, scaling over the scaffolding, and winding through the escalating architecture, they both reach the wide expanse of the helipad. However, the backlight of the city's nightscape lights the figure he had been pursuing, and it completely catches him by surprise.

A lissome, svelte shape of a woman wearing a leather cat suit, with a long appendage appearing like a tail trailing from her waist down to her knees, eyes hidden behind infrared goggles, and two animal-like ears sitting atop her aviator helmet. Her relaxed position keeps him taut, ready and wary.

"Meeeow…" she taunts.

Something inside him snaps.

One of her lithe arms extends, holding what appears to be a hard drive, and he knows very well what's in it: blueprints for a skeleton key to all of Bryant Industries technology.

"You after this?" she teases, her voice so sultry, dangerously familiar. "Or after me?"

At that, something that grips his chest. Not apprehension, not allure; it's something that he doesn't know, something he doesn't  _want_  to know.

He ignores her question. "That doesn't belong to you."

She seems to scoff at him as she tucks it into a pocket. "Does it look like I care?"

He readies his stance. She readies her own, unsheathing sharp claw-like appendages on her fingertips. The lights of the city below them seem to glow brighter, as if illuminating the spectacle of their fight, brightening the roguish eyes from behind her goggles.

"Ready when you are, big guy."

He makes the first move.

Bolting towards her, he throws the first punch, she dodges quickly, she tries to lunge at him, he ducks. Her claws try to scratch at his face, but he manoeuvres through her quick cuts and pounces. Her kicks manage to land on his shoulders and torso, but they affect him little, allowing him holes to be able to break into her defence as he deals hits on her legs and core, creating enough space to get her away from him.

Blown back, he takes advantage of their distance and runs at her to pin her down, but she somersaults over him and manages to land a scratch on his jawline diving downward. The pain sears through his flesh, and as he hisses getting up, the skin torn open begins to let loose a small amount of blood running down the Kevlar lining of the cowl. She lands flawlessly on her feet, the grin on her lips widening.

There's a rage that fuels him now, as he turns around and throws precise punches towards her frame. Though she manages to block some and evade a few, some land on her solar plexus, behind her knees, and on her neck, slowly weakening her defense line until she's pushed to the edge of the helipad, the edge of the building, one step away from a thousand foot drop onto the asphalt below.

"Hand it over," he snarls; it isn't a friendly request, it's a demand.

She's tired, panting, injured in her makeshift stance, but she still has that mischievous smile. "I've missed you, Bats."

And without another word, suddenly she tumbles backward and leaps off the building.

The instinct kicks in and he runs towards the edge, his heart pounding out of some unknown fear. But upon reaching the tip of the helipad, he sees the hook of a grappling gun shoot upward towards another skyscraper, swinging with enough momentum to propel someone far away from him in a small amount of time. And who else is holding that gun but the thief, waving goodbye at him with a victorious light in her inaudible laugh? Chasing her now is too troublesome to go through, even with the stakes high enough of the blueprints of a powerful tool.

He looks down at his utility belt. His grappling gun is missing.

"Alfred?" he speaks into his communicator.

"Yes, Sir?" the other end replies, the lacings of a British accent around an old man's vowels.

"Rebuild another grappling gun."

"I'll begin preparations right away. Did something happen to the one you have?"

Her figure disappears into the maze of Gotham's skyline. An uncomfortable silence, long enough for him to hear the police sirens at the foot of the HQ building. Took them quite a while this time around.

"I lost it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a noir fic, so that means that every little detail—every name, place, location, mannerism—is essential to forwarding the plot. Pay _very close attention_ to everything and you'll be rewarded with making yourself feel smart, and for revealing a little more to the story that'll make it a bit more fun.


	2. Great Men are Always of a Nature Originally Melancholy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A disappointed butler. A multi-million business deal. A conversation with the devil. A dug-up grave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for the feedback! Early update for now, since I'll be incredibly busy this week with finals and junk. You get the picture.
> 
> If you can’t tell, I really love describing how Batman looks like. As much as possible, I don’t use the actual word ‘Batman’ and use other things instead, like specter and shadow, to describe his movement, almost wraith-like. One of my favourite artists on _Batman,_ Dustin Nguyen, really draws him looking like a phantom, like a dark apparition and not a human. It’s really something.
> 
> Don’t worry about Selina; you’ll be pleased to know that the interesting stuff will come up in the next chapter, and it’ll be much longer than the first two.

“Good morning, Master Wayne.”

Bruce is already there, sitting on the dining table in front of his laptop as he raises his eyes from the screen as some sort of greeting. There’s a square patch of gauze covering a part of his jawline. Nearly dressed to go to work, with the only thing missing from his attire being an attractive Armani suit jacket. His eyes are tired, his body language just as much.

Alfred removes his coat and sits at the chair across him, twiddling his fingers on the table top. The window outside provides a clear view of the misty lake set against a cloudy morning, a welcome distraction to the uncomfortable silence that overtakes them. Bruce raises his mug to his lips and takes three gulps of cold coffee before putting it down raucously, his deft fingers clacking away on the laptop keyboard while Alfred watches him, motionless.

They both know there’s something to talk about. One wants to open the conversation. The other one doesn’t.

It becomes evident who is who when Alfred clears his throat, forcing Bruce to look up from his work. Bruce can tell from the conviction in Alfred’s eyes that there’s no avoiding it anymore.

“So,” Alfred leans back on his chair. “About yesterday evening.”

Bruce sighs half dejectedly, half exasperatedly. It was going to come eventually.

Alfred’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Are we going to keep ignoring it like it ever happened?”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Bruce finally says, his fatigued stare locking with his butler’s.

Alfred leans in, his elbows now on the table. “We both know there’s _a lot_ to talk about.”

Bruce spreads his arms, his lips tightening into a thin line. “What do you want me to say?”

Alfred shrugs. “Oh, I don’t know. ‘Good morning, Alfred. The woman who I used to care about very much has suddenly returned to Gotham City after an incredibly long absence.’ That’s a good starter.”

Bruce gives him that look that he only ever showed to Alfred in two scenarios: one, whenever they would disagree with each other, or two, when Alfred was more than right and he couldn’t find a proper reply.

“I’m sorry, Sir,” Alfred gave a feigned frown, “did I stutter? Say something wrong?”

He didn’t, and that’s probably the most infuriating part.

“What if it _isn’t_ her?” Bruce proposes.

Alfred scoffs. “You _wish_ it was her.”

Bruce gives off another sigh. “Alfred…”

“Sir, what are you running from?”

That makes Bruce think for a while as he stares at the data on his laptop, dancing numbers and shifting locations on a digital map of Gotham. There’s a chance he knows he can grasp, but it’s a risk he’s not ready to face. And even risks have odds, and to know those odds, he has to know the situation. For once, he doesn’t want to admit that the situation is one he would rather much avoid at the moment.

“I’m not running from anything,” he clarifies, “I’m only wary.”

Now it’s Alfred’s turn to be dejected. He leans back in his seat, pinching the bridge of his nose. “This opportunity presents itself to you on a silver platter and you choose to throw it away.” A pause, and it’s long enough that the little beeps Bruce’s laptop makes as it scans Gotham City every second are incredibly loud. “Don’t you miss that life with her?”

He doesn’t want to reminisce it, to live through it again only to remind himself of what he had, what he lost. “It was too long ago.” He closes his laptops and stands, picking up his blazer from behind his chair. “I _can’t_ miss it.”

Alfred stays silent as Bruce crosses the room, donning his jacket as his shoes make uneasy clicks on the ceramic tiling.

“Do I have any meetings scheduled today?” Bruce asks from the kitchen counter.

Alfred picks up the tablet on the desk and checks the long list of events and people scheduled, most of which he was going to ignore. “Theodore Bryant’s taking up your whole morning, you’re meeting him at nine at his HQ. You also have a meeting with the board for the whole afternoon, and a dinner at seven with the Prestons at the Skyline.”

Bruce exhales. “I’ll be taking the Tesla.”

“Very well, Sir.”

A hesitation, a breath; they both want to say something, but Alfred’s the one who makes the jump. “I suggest that for today, you use some time alone to think on our returning visitor condition.”

Bruce stops. Alfred doesn’t turn his head to look at him, but his words make the atmosphere tense. The laptop is off, the scanning beeps have vanished. It’s just pure, painful, utter silence.

“Wait, Alfred.”

Alfred’s taken aback; he didn’t expect a reply. “Yes, Sir?”

He hears Bruce’s footsteps approach, then he sets a warm ceramic mug on the table top in front of him. Alfred looks up to see the same worn-out face, the expression of a man still on the road to mending himself, piece by piece, something he’s tired of seeing every single day.

“You forgot your coffee,” Bruce finally says.

The butler supresses the urge to sigh again. “Thank you, Sir.”

Alfred downs half of it in one go. Bruce walks away, the clicks of his shoes disappearing into the garage.

* * *

The elevator chimes at it reaches the 72nd floor of Bryant Industries HQ. Bruce walks out, fixing the lapels of his suit jacket as he gives the young worried-looking secretary outside the CEO doors another one of his playboy smiles. She blushes, then gives a nod and a gesture that allows him to enter the office.

The large doors are gone and off their hinges from a failed robbery (or at least, that's what it said on the headlines), so he simply invites himself in. He’s greeted by the huge expanse windows behind the small desk that takes little space in the huge room. In the daylight, the place looks different; there are abstract paintings on the wall, plenty of bookshelves, and lavish interior decorating. He looks up at the skylight, and he notices the cut hole is still there, already boarded up and ready to be replaced.

The CEO, Theodore Bryant, stands behind his desk, looking down onto Gotham City while he’s on a call with someone who obviously frustrates him. Despite the many controversies that surround him, Bruce can’t help but admire the kid’s grit. His net worth’s already climbing up towards billions, and he’s the first of his kind to ever make a stable empire from nothing in the crumbling hellhole of Gotham. He can be considered new to the game, though he’s significantly younger than Bruce by nearly ten years. The business sections of the papers aren't wrong to start calling him the rising billionaire of Gotham. Handsome, witty, charming; the only thing separating him from the Waynes is a couple of millions of dollars and a cynical attitude.

Theodore hangs up his phone just as he notices Bruce. “Sorry for the delay, Mr. Wayne. PR’s been having trouble with all the publicity we’ve been getting.”

Bruce raises his eyebrows in fake curiosity.

Theodore sits down on his swivel armchair. “You _do_ know what happened last night, right?”

Realization dawns on Bruce as he sits on the velvet one across him. “Ah, the incident with those goons? Heard it ended up in a mess.”

Theodore shrugs. “I wouldn’t really consider it much of a tragic ending, though. Rumours said that the Batman was here to stop them. Too bad the security footage was sabotaged by those thugs. Would’ve loved to see him in action.”

Bruce’s tired eyes widen. “The Batman, huh?”

“Yeah. I know a lot of people find him weird and ‘the very root of Gotham’s judicial problem’ or whatever _The Gazette_ wants to call him, but frankly, I find him pretty remarkable.”

There’s an incredibly thin smile on Bruce’s face, but his tone sounds drained, as always. “Bet he’d love to hear that.”

Theodore stays quiet for a while, staring at the older man, then frowns out of concern and points to Bruce’s face. “Something happen there?”

Bruce’s hand immediately goes to the gauze pad on his jaw. “Oh, _that._ An incident with a few broken shot glasses at a bar, nothing to worry yourself over.”

Theodore looks like he’s buying it. “Alright, if you say so. Never thought of you as the bar-brawl type, though.”

Bruce flashes another fake smirk that makes him look interested. “If you see a pretty girl at the Skyline and some other lunatic has the same idea as you, things can get messy pretty quickly.”

Theodore laughs. “I’ll take your word for it.”

After a brief silence, Bruce clears his throat. “Now, about that deal.”

“I was just getting to that.” Theodore bends to pick up papers from a drawer in his desk and procures a sign pen from his pocket. “There we go.”

Bruce picks up the papers and scans them quickly. “The final product.”

Theodore nods, and points to a blank at the end of the document. “Just sign right there, and the selected capital in your company go into funding my new safes project.”

Bruce takes the pen and taps it thoughtfully on his lip. “Biotech, if I’m not mistaken?”

“Only the most advanced,” Theodore smiles, obviously proud of his brainchild. “Incredibly accurate retinal scanners and fingerprint-sensitive keypads. And that doesn’t even include the thermoregulatory equipment inside and the advanced lock mechanisms.”

“When’ll you present this to the public?”

“Once the first model is out, there'll be a publicity gala. Then it’ll be presented at the Gotham City Bank to store my money. When it flies and people purchase, you get twenty percent of the gains.”

Bruce nods. “How much am I funding again?”

“It says right there: seventy-five million dollars.” Theodore holds up his hands, as if in mock surrender. “I know, it’s a lot, but it’s what we talked about last time with your board. You don’t have to be pressured into giving me an answer this w—”

Bruce clicks the pen and scribbles his signature. “Done.”

Theodore’s eyes widen. “What?”

Bruce places the pen back on the desk pushes the contract back to Theodore. “You forget that seventy-five million is what I make in a few weeks. Take it, do something useful with it.”

Theodore’s obviously taken aback by shock and joy, try as he might to hide it, like a true professional. “T-Thank you, Mr. Wayne!”

A pause as Theodore keeps the contract and proceeds to dial someone on his phone, probably his board to inform them of the good news. Before he even hits a button, though, Bruce leans back on his chair, and an uncomfortable air settles in. It gives him the sort of air that Theodore is the inferior one, even in his own CEO office.

“That incident last night, with the masked goons,” Bruce asks, trying to be as indifferent as he could. “Do you know if they ever got something of yours?”

Theodore stops for a while, as if trying to recount the moment, then shakes his head. “Not to my knowledge, no.”

Bruce dissects his body language and matches it up with what he already knows. Theodore’s lying.

* * *

Gordon smothers the cigarette on the GCPD rooftop, entertained by nothing else but the jagged night skyline of Gotham and the constant hum of the Bat-signal. The large winged shadow casts itself across the clouds over the city, visible by every good citizen, every cruel criminal, every corrupt politician, every psychopath that planned to tear the streets apart.

As a cop undergone years of training, he can tell when he’s being watched. He doesn’t like the feeling. When he turns, he’s there.

On the cornice of the rooftop exit, the shadows make themselves visible against the sky in the form a billowing cape, hard build, and devilish scowl, all tall and upright. The Commissioner looks at him expectantly, and the shadow drops, the cape following behind him like seething silhouettes, until he’s standing right in front of Gordon, menacing, intimidating.

“Info on Clarissa Walker?” the Bat asks, not acquiescent. His discordant voice is not that of a man's.

Gordon nods as he lights another cigarette. “Wasn’t much of an interrogation, actually. The husband, Matt Walker…he revealed a lot of the details to us from his side with little to no resistance. Intention was he murdered his wife because he believes he’s cheating on her. Says that Clarissa’s a mistress of that rich kid Theodore Bryant.”

The Bat doesn’t tilt his head, doesn’t move.

Gordon leans on the Bat-signal, its hum much softer. “Matt claims that she’s been getting extra money for her…ahem, _services_ …to Bryant.”

“How much?”

“He says eighty-five grand.”

“Do you believe him?”

Gordon shrugs as tendrils of smoke escape from his mouth. He can only see the shadow of the Bat dimly against the darkness, the dim colors of his outfit working to blend him in perfectly with the night. “We gotta. We have the money in our custody, counted and everything, not a single digit out of place. According to him, he got the money right after the murder, transferred straight into his bank account.”

“Still doesn’t sound like a closed case to me.”

“I don’t think so either. Feel like there’s more to this than some petty squabble over domestic drama, like something reeking beneath the surface. I guess you know the feeling.”

He's already too familiar with it. "I’ll get back to you with whatever I have.”

Gordon nods and turns around to pull the lever, switching off the Bat-signal and stopping the reverberation of the spotlight’s drone. But when he turns around, the Bat is gone; there is nothing but quiet loneliness, empty darkness.

It’s been twenty years of them doing this. He’s no longer surprised.

* * *

The buzzing of the elevator’s mechanisms stops dead once it hits the bottom, and Alfred steps into the underground hall, the doors sealing themselves behind him. As he walks towards the computer, his footsteps measure the beat of the constant flow of the natural waterfalls that the whole hideout was built around. He sees Bruce sitting in front of his computer, leaning on his comfortable chair looking far from comfortable. One look at all of the open windows on the multiple monitors clues him in that he hasn’t gotten a single hour of sleep.

“Good morning, Master Wayne,” Alfred greets, earning a side-look from Bruce.

“Morning?” Bruce murmurs, then looks down at the small clock at the edge of one of his screens, and it reads 4:12 AM. He groans, rubbing his eyes.

Alfred sets down the tray he had been holding on a small table top, putting the cup of hot coffee in front of the keyboard. “If you ignore it long enough, it’ll grow cold.”

Bruce looks at it and moves it a little, but doesn’t take a sip. “Thanks, Alfred.”

Alfred says nothing as he glances at the monitors of the computer. One has all news coverage and files regarding the late Clarissa Walker, and video feed gives them GCPD film on the interrogation that they conducted last night. The other provides them satellite data on the incident with the thief from Bryant Industries; apparently it’s being heralded by the media as not only video evidence of a master thief, but also rare footage of the Batman caught on camera for the first time in five years. It’ll be deleted off the grid once he’s done with it.

“Any connections?” Alfred asks.

“If there were any, I wouldn’t have stayed here until 4:12,” Bruce replies. “There’s nothing. I found nothing.”

Alfred stays silent, then leaves to work on the new grappling gun close by. “You should’ve come upstairs earlier.”

Bruce shoots him a curious glance.

“One Clark Kent called at about an hour before midnight,” Alfred continues, plugging in a few extra pieces into the trigger. “He sounded quite concerned.”

Bruce blinks a few times, as if in disbelief. “What did he say?”

“He apparently knows you’ve been distressed as of late, probably because you’ve been too busy beating up thugs in high-security industry buildings nowadays. I told him you were unavailable, and he only expressed the sentiment that if anything comes around, he could be of help.”

Bruce wipes his face.

“Miss Prince also called last week, may I remind you. She asked the same thing, and she offered her assistance as well. It seems your Justice League is more worried over you than yourself.”

Bruce continues to type away. “They don’t have to be. If anyone has to deal with Gotham City’s problems, it’s me. Clark’s occupied keeping the planet from ultimate destruction, Diana’s got terrorist attacks to stop, the rest of the League has something to do; I have this place to keep me busy.”

“If you say so. However, I suggest that you return their calls soon, just for the sake of politeness.”

Bruce says nothing, but he makes a mental note.

It’s silent in the cave. Bruce types away as he tries to pinpoint any interesting data that his computer brings up, while Alfred finishes attaching the last remaining pieces of the new grappling gun: hard yet lightweight steel, using compressed air as a catapult, capable of holding up to four-hundred pounds. It’s a far cry from the very first prototype they ever built nearly twenty years ago.

“Sir, if I may interrupt your work for a moment.”

Bruce turns. Alfred gets up from the table and goes to the computer, minimizing all of the files that had already been there. Bruce looks on silently as Alfred gives a weary breath.

“You said that you deleted all of her files ten years ago,” the butler says. “The night she left.”

Bruce freezes in place. He doesn’t like where this is going.

Alfred types a few commands on the keyboard. “I was doing spring cleaning a few weeks ago, and found this.”

Suddenly, files, news clippings, pictures, and other video surveillance feed pop up over the monitor. Headlines about B & E’s that include some sort of feline pun invade the blank space, accompanied by dossiers of a hundred different names and nationalities, numerous fake passports, and CCTV files from banks of a catlike grace evading all security measures before winking into the camera. What catches both of their attentions, however, are the mug shots of the very woman in question. Unblemished sun-kissed skin, sylphlike posture in front of the camera, dark hair grown to her waist, and emerald green eyes that look more thrilled instead of afraid being caught.

A dangerously beautiful face.

Bruce feels something inside him break.

Alfred watches Bruce’s expression carefully. “You told me they were gone.”

“I kept them,” Bruce retorts, almost unlike himself. “For reference.”

“For reference,” Alfred scoffs and looks away, annoyance creeping due to Bruce’s adamant nature.

An uneasy pause places itself between the two of them. Alfred puts his hands on his waist, Bruce leans back on his chair, eyes closed; he can’t bear one more second looking at any image of her.

“I know you want to believe that the culprit at Bryant’s was her,” Alfred feels the query on his tongue before letting it go. “And I need an honest answer, Master Wayne.”

Bruce doesn’t move.

“Are you afraid of what she makes you feel?”

Bruce takes a deep breath, his eyes fluttering open to lay upon all the information about her that should’ve been deleted long ago. Whatever they had in the past, it was really something that changed who he was, for better or for worse; something that exposed a part of him that wan't supposed to exist, something he never wanted to see again.

He was vulnerable in her arms.

He hates being vulnerable. 

In a few clacks of the keyboard, all the data vanishes from the screen and the computer’s memory; his decision becomes obvious. Alfred tries to hide his dejected look as he goes back to fixing the grappling gun, and Bruce gets up from the chair. They both want to believe the tense air had vanished, but it’s still lingering.

“I'll be going upstairs,” he picks up the coat on the computer chair, putting it on deftly. "Are there any interesting meetings waiting for me later?"

“You only have one major event,” Alfred puts the trigger in place. “The publicity gala tonight for the unveiling of Bryant’s biotech safes project.”

Bruce groans exasperatedly, internally.

“I picked up the nice Hugo Boss for you to wear to it later.” A pause as Bruce walks away from the monitor towards the elevator, leaving Alfred alone in the cave. “I also suggest you nap before the dawn breaks, and that you take a nice, long bath. Oh, and shave.”

Unconsciously, Bruce reaches up to his jaw and feels the rough five-day old stubble eating at his skin, even with the claw scratches on his jaw already healed. He gets into the elevator, presses a button, and it begins to ascend.


	3. Misfortune Shows Those Who are Not Really Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reunion under different circumstances. A murder and robbery in the same building. An interrupted gala. A pursuit into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know that scene in every _Batman_ installment where Bruce attends some sort of gala but it’s somehow essential to the plot because he either gets information, receives information, or it’s just an excuse to show us how rich he is?
> 
> Oh, don’t tell me you don’t know. _Batman v Superman_ is guilty of this too. They did it twice.

He arrives early, before Bryant.

Not that a billionaire isn’t supposed to be early, but in order to keep that long-lasting image of the rich hedonistic idiot, he has to be irresponsible to an incredible degree. Once he gets out of the Bugatti Chiron, the press call his name like a pack of hungry wolves and he smiles, waves, tries his best to look the slightest bit interested in the event. The clicks of the cameras and loud hollers for him to ‘look this way!’ no longer affect him like they used to, and he fixes the lapels of his expensive suit jacket, walking along the red carpet as he smirks at a few lucky photographers. The flashing lights can rival the twinkling of the bored stars above.

The Prestigio is not a new hotel in the uptown, but he’s lived long enough to see it constantly exchanged between the rich families of the city. Now, the owner was none other than Theodore Bryant, the newest player in Gotham’s richest circles. He’s been to the lobby so many times he’s surprised the receptionists don’t have the penthouse reserved for Wayne Enterprises every time he enters.

The ballroom is just as garish as ever, high-reaching ceilings with modern-day chandeliers lighting the ballroom to an almost obnoxiously bright level. A stage is still being prepared for the press conferences regarding Theodore Bryant’s newest project, and the bar to the left is already doing its best to keep up with the demand of drinks. Upon entry, many of the suits and gowns call his name and try to wrangle him into another sycophantic chat. Sometimes, the conversations actually mean something: an old investor who knew his father a long time ago come to say hi, some stockbroker group more than willing to donate money into the Wayne’s funding company for the rebuilding of orphanages, and an exchange of contact details with a few other companies interested in fixing Gotham from the ground up with his help. Sadly, most of the time, it’s boring: a crony introducing him to his two young, pretty, eligible daughters for marriage, a crooked financier looking for an easy way to the top of the city’s corruption exchanges, or a sleazy politician looking to borrow money to worm his way out of a sex scandal.

A crooked city, a rotten dump, made more evident in this masquerade without masks.

Just as he plans to sneak out into a secluded corner, the noise of the room is suddenly transferred to the entrance. As he looks over to see who could possibly be causing this much ruckus, he catches the face of young well-dressed Theodore Bryant, already pleasing the crowd by exchanging handshakes and cheek kisses. Once Theodore catches his eyes, he goes over to him, giving a firm handshake.

“Bruce!” Theodore says excitedly. “I knew you’d come.”

“How could I let down the rising billionaire of Gotham?” Bruce greets back.

“That’s what they’re calling me now, huh?” Theodore smirks. “What a title. The media can’t seem to get a catchy headline now.”

Bruce shrugs. He knows the feeling. ‘The son of Gotham’ didn’t stick as long as the tabloids hoped.

“Oh, and I’d like to re-introduce you two,” Theodore eagerly chirps. “I brought along someone familiar as a date, hope you don’t mind.”

Though Bruce’s fake smile remains, his brows knit. “Wait, what do you m—?”

Theodore gestures for someone to come to them; the crowd doesn’t make way for her, but it seems almost so. She struts towards them like jeopardy, her black evening gown is deadly in simplicity, tracing weak shadows on the floor, highlighting the curves on her waist and hips. Unblemished sun-kissed skin, sylphlike posture, dark hair cut short, and emerald green eyes that look more thrilled instead of afraid being caught.

There’s danger in her eyes. He doesn’t like it.

He should have shaved.

“Bruce Wayne, I’d like you to meet Selina Kyle,” Theodore says pleasantly, unaware of the electric air around him.

“We’ve met,” Bruce says matter-of-factly, rather stupidly. His gaze doesn’t leave her eyes.

“You don’t sound too pleased to see old friends,” she drawls, a crafty grin on her red lips.

It’s the same voice he heard on Bryant’s helipad. He resists the urge to say that they were never old friends.

“Quite the contrary,” he says, taking her hand and giving a soft kiss. Her skin still feels the same way against his touch.

The fact that he’s thinking about it makes it worse.

“Oh, such a gentleman,” her brows raise, her tone slurs.

The tension is unbearable, and he feels that she’s trying to exploit it. Luckily, it seems like she isn’t and turns back to Theodore instead. “Teddy, darling…I’ll just get a few drinks and I’ll get back you, okay?”

“Sure thing,” Theodore smiles, and she gives him a quick peck on the cheek before leaving towards the direction of the bar.

She leaves with a wink. Both men think that the wink wasn’t for themselves, but for the other, even though they sincerely wish it was theirs. There’s silence between the two billionaires, but Theodore’s quick to break it. He says the line that Bruce was just about to say.

“Can I talk to you for a second?”

Bruce nods, and Theodore gets two champagne glasses from a waiter and hands the other one to Bruce. It reminds him that he hasn’t touched a glass the whole time he was there. They go to a secluded corner, close enough for people to see them, far enough that they wouldn’t be interrupted.

“There’s been a problem,” Theodore says as Bruce takes a sip of the champagne: Salon Blanc Le Mesnil-sur-Oger, by the lively taste. Cheap.

Bruce raises his eyebrows, prompting him further.

“There’s been an issue with the GCPD. You know the news about the Clarissa Walker girl?”

“That murder on East End’s Harlow Street. What about it?”

Theodore’s voice drops to a whisper. “It’s not public yet, but the man who killed her claims that I’ve been seeing her. You know, that guy who stole her money. Her husband.”

“And _have_ you been seeing her?”

Theodore’s quick to react, overreacting a scoff. “Of course not.”

Bruce reads his tone; he’s lying. “So what about it?”

Theodore looks uneasy. “I don’t know…you have hundreds of strings to pull in this city, right? Can’t you pull a few on the GCPD enough to erase that?”

Bruce tries his best not to frown. “I _do_ have a lot of strings, but I’m not too slick with that kind of thing, with my name being all over the entertainment section of _The Gotham Gazette._ If I’m engaged in that kind of corruption, there’ll be questions; I can't afford that.”

Theodore’s face drops. “Right, sorry for asking.”

The two of them move into the party as people realize that they’ve been standing in the corner, with guests casting suspicious glances in their direction.

“See, here’s the thing about Gotham, Theodore,” Bruce says as he slings his arm around him, putting the champagne glass on a passing waiter's tray. “If you have any secrets and you aren’t careful, this city’s gonna find out one way or another.”

Theodore gives a weak smile. “Are you saying that I’m hiding something?”

Bruce shrugs. “I don’t know. Are you?”

“I don’t think so. I like my spotless record. I don’t have anything to hide.”

Conspicuous body language. Another lie.

“What about you, Mr. Wayne?” Theodore’s eyes narrow despite his smile; he’s obviously trying to swing the balance of the conversation in his favor. “You have anything to hide?”

The corner of Bruce’s lips turn up. “My life’s an open book. If I had something to hide, the media would’ve found out long ago.”

Theodore’s easily gullible; that isn’t good. He nods in understanding, and that part of the conversation dies there, gladly so. “I’m sorry, by the way.”

“About what?” Bruce asks.

“About Selina. I know you two used to date back in the day, and that it ended up pretty messily. But I just thought…like, maybe I have a chance with her, you know? I hope you don’t mind.”

It’s uncomfortable how Theodore is beginning to sound like a broken part of his subconscious. “I don’t mind the slightest.”

Theodore lets out a relieved sigh. He can’t read liars.

“Have fun with her while she’s with you,” Bruce says with as much charm as he could muster. “She can be quite the elusive thing.”

Theodore smiles. Before he opens his mouth, however, a stranger from the party interrupts them.

“Excuse me, Mr. Wayne,” an old man in a suit tells the both of them rather than just Mr. Wayne. “I would like a word with Mr. Bryant for a while.”

He allows Theodore to be dragged away. Once the young billionaire vanishes into the crowd, Bruce releases a sigh he didn’t know he was holding and heads to the one place he knows he can find her, other than the bar. He just hopes she hasn’t changed too much for him to be true about it.

And he’s correct: right in front of the stage, he sees the olive skin of her bare back revealed by her dress as she stares at the display of Bryant’s latest project, the very prototype of the biotech safe that they’re planning to put into Gotham City Bank before the week ends. He can tell from her body posture that her eyes are gazing at it with curiosity, studying every inch of what she can see; he only stops right behind her, a footstep away, pocketing his hands, looking up at the technological marvel.

He gives a run-down of the details. “Unbelievably precise eye scanners, fingerprint-sensitive keypads, an eight digit code. Plus thermo-sensitive alarms that would go off at the very moment it detects a different heat signature from that of the buyer. Nearly thirty-five thousand dollars for each unit.”

“Don’t you think I already know that?” she replies, her gaze moving to him; she proceeds to leave. “Excuse me, Mr. Wayne.”

The way she said his name. The last time she ever called him ‘Mr. Wayne’ was—

“So…” he’s quick to catch up to her, looping an arm around her waist as he pulls her close; she flinches at the touch, but he nearly did as well. “Your latest plaything is none other than Theodore Bryant.”

“Surprised?” she smiles, and he hates how she’s giving into him so fast. “Guess my type is attractive billionaire playboy. He seems to like me very much.”

“I can tell.” He sounds so pathetic.

She can sense it. “What’s wrong? Can’t stand other men touching your things? Never took you for the jealous type.”

He definitely is not. “What do you want from him?”

She blinks, as if he’s senseless. “You mean… _other_ than his love and money?”

Bruce resists the urge to frown.

“I’m a simple girl with simple plans, Mr. Wayne. I just want a new, rich, good-looking boyfriend, that’s all. One who doesn’t brood stoically on rooftops and gets constant near-death experiences from killer clowns.”

Bruce’s lips press into a thin line. He isn’t sorry. “Hope you know it isn’t nice to toy around with other people’s hearts.”

Selina chuckles. “Then again, I’m not a nice girl.”

Shit, he’s forgotten how good she is at these stupid quips. And how they were such an obvious cover for her agenda.

His lips brush past her earlobe, and he can feel her try to supress a shiver. The warmth she exudes is incredibly overwhelming. “Was it you? That night on the helipad?”

He knows she’s smirking. “Looks like you’ve caught me again. They don’t call you the world’s greatest detective for nothing. What’s your next move, hm? Drag me to jail? Imprison me like the bad kitty cat I am? I’ve been a naughty, _naughty_ thief.”

Ugh, fuck…that _voice._ He’s only heard that lascivious tone used when she’s straddling him on a bed, his lips against the fragrant skin of her neck, her hands running down his bare chest as she constantly—

“I could brand you,” he threatens, his snarl more of a night specter than Bruce Wayne. “Make you live forever with a scar that proves you aren’t above the law.”

“What, and _you_ are?” she turns around, finally looking at him face to face, as they stop right in the middle of the busy ballroom; the antipathy in her eyes catches him off-guard. “But we both know you aren’t that kind of vigilante anymore.”

He wants respond, argue against her, but in a way, she’s right; and if he debates with her again, it’ll end up like last time. The ire in her eyes melts back into mischief, thankfully. She leans in closer, he feels his head tilt to the side as she reaches up and touches his face, her dexterous fingers against the rough of his stubble, against the healed wounds she had made, down his neck and along the collar of his suit. He stands completely still, as if she would run away once he suddenly moves.

“Sorry about the scars,” she sounds like she really means it. “You don’t look too different with them.”

They both look different regardless.

“You cut your hair,” he comments; he remembers just how long it used to be, flowing behind her as he pursued her into the night, when they were still new to the game and prone to bad decisions. “It makes you look like a punk rock star.”

“And yours is greying,” she returns; she recalls just how dark and soft it was whenever her fingers ran through it, a testament to how virile they once were, unafraid of the challenges the world posed. “It makes you look like a sugar daddy.”

He deadpans. “Don’t.”

And her lips smile, genuine, unlike her. “Hey, I’m not a young woman anymore either, but look at us. Chasing each other, just like we used to.”

She’s about to walk away another time, but then he suddenly grabs her arm, pressing his chest into her back. His voice drops into a low growl. “Don’t think I’m gonna let you get away with my wallet.”

She sighs exasperatedly, thinking he wouldn’t notice. Once they part, she grins, brings up a Tom Ford pouch that she managed to swipe from his coat pocket, and places it into his hands. With that, he allows her to walk away, his eyes following her until she disappears into the crowd.

He shouldn’t have let her go. His heart hadn’t felt this much palpitation in a while.

* * *

“Oh, shit,” Gordon says to himself, but it’s picked up by his radio.

The Commissioner stands still in front of Matt Walker’s cell, looking at the dead body that someone managed to tie to a chair and shoot with multiple bullet holes, right through the head of the remorseful husband. Gordon knew that the gunshots were supposed to go unheard, but even a sniper makes a loud mess once the target is hit. Those sounds were heard only five minutes ago. They perpetrators couldn’t have gotten far.

O’Hara is quick to act beside him and talks into her radio. “HQ, do you hear me? There are infiltrators inside the building. I repeat: there are infiltrators inside the building.”

The static of the radio returns status. “Copy that, Lieutenant. The situation has escalated. The eighty-five thousand dollars in the safe has also been stolen. There’s not a dollar they left behind.”

Gordon’s eyes jump to panic and screams into his radio. “Don’t just stand there, seal off the place!”

“We’re going as fast as we can, Sir,” the officer replies.

Gordon’s doubts cloud his better judgment and his gut tells him that something is off-putting, even with a reassuring officer report. He runs as fast as he can to the nearest window by the alleyway behind the GCPD, and apprehension grips him. Outside, armed men load a huge sack that could contain eighty-five grand into an armored car, and they hit the gas and drive recklessly into the Main Street traffic.

“Dammit, they’ve already slipped out!” Gordon runs upstairs, much to O’Hara’s confusion, speaking into his radio. “I want every HQ officer to assemble into the Cavalry Unity on Main Street. Track down that armored car, and I mean now!”

The next few lines from the static are all “Copy that, Sir.”

"Commissioner Gordon!" O’Hara grabs him by the arm before he made it to the third floor on the stairwell. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Gordon shakes his arm from her. “I said once that he has a car that goes at two hundred miles an hour, and now more than ever do we need that fucking car!”

O’Hara can’t believe any of this. “What the hell am I supposed to do then?”

“Give the squads a heads up. Wait for me to lead the Main Street brigade and give that armored car the chase of its life. Don’t you dare let it out of your sight!”

O’Hara nods. “Yes, Sir!”

* * *

Bruce’s phone rings suddenly in the middle of a conversation between Bryant’s parents, much to their disappointment and his relief. He excuses himself politely and answers it in a quiet corner. “What is it, Alfred?”

“Have you stopped to look outside lately?” Alfred answers.

Bruce makes his way to a window, where he sees the glowing shadow of the Bat-signal over the evening clouds of Gotham.

He takes in a breath. “Hold on for a second.”

“Of course, Sir.”

He puts the phone on mute for a while and goes to find Bryant in the middle of a conversation with a potential sponsor, Selina draped around his arms like a shawl. Bruce interrupts their conversation briefly with a clearing of his throat, and Theodore looks more than willing to accommodate him with a smile. It makes leaving the place a little bit worse.

“Hey, uh…Theodore,” Bruce says as languidly as possible, waving his phone in mid-air. “Something came up at the office, rather urgent. I’m gonna have to give myself an early leave tonight.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” Theodore doesn’t seem to mind; at his side, Selina tries to find a window to look out of. “I appreciate you coming, though. I really do.”

The two exchange a last handshake, and Bruce prepares to leave.

“Don’t forget your nice suit,” Selina says rather suddenly.

Bruce stops and looks back for a split second. They happen to lock eyes, and she’s just as roguish as ever, unapologetic. But they don’t exchange any more words or wisecracks; he continues until he’s outside, finally unmuting his phone once he’s in the lobby.

“Alfred, are you still there?”

"As attentive as ever," the other end replies quickly.

The Bat-signal continues to push his urgency, and he begins to walk faster. “What’s the situation?”

“Matt Walker’s been gunned down inside the GCPD. A bunch of masked mercenaries with arms also took the eighty-five thousand dollars from their safe and are driving down Main Street with it in an armored vehicle, possibly stolen. The GCPD are giving them a chase, but the situation doesn’t look very good.”

He’s outside, not too far from Main Street. He can hear the sirens under the vigilant light of the signal’s shadow. “Get the car.”

“Right away, Sir.”

* * *

To the passers-by having dinner on Main Street’s seventy-five restaurants, the whole chase seems a blur. First the noisy rumble giant of an armored truck, with a few dollars flying out from the open end like a literal paper trail, then the loud wailing sirens of the GCPD’s cars storming down Main Street’s traffic like a flurry of horses, bursting through the evening traffic’s quiet. Gordon rides shotgun as O’Hara takes the reins on the front, pushing the GCPD’s attack forward into the night. He’s barking commands into his radio as his officers try their best to work as fast as they could to the speed at which he gives them.

“I need a scan of that licence plate at Land Transpo ASAP!” Gordon instructs.

“Copy that, Sir!” someone answers.

Before Gordon could speak again, bullets bounce off the car monitor as O’Hara tries to steer clear of them and stay on the road at the same time. Despite the far distance setting the two vehicles apart, they could see the masked men laughing as their machine gun attempts to scatter apart the advancing cars.

“You said he’d be here!” O’Hara yells above the recoil.

“He needs time!” Gordon reiterates.

“Does it usually take this long?” O’Hara returns and assumes the frontal position again, rallying the GCPD back behind her.

“You think that I’m pleased?” Gordon shoots back, and before O’Hara could reply, static plays on his radio, and he hits a button. “Status?”

“The layout analysts predicted their final destination, Sir,” an officer gives. “Looks like they’re headed straight towards Trigate Bridge.”

O’Hara frowns as she stares at Gordon, puzzled. “Why the hell are they going to Trigate Bridge?”

“I wouldn’t have an idea, unless they’d be trying to e—O’Hara, watch the fucking road!”

O’Hara looks forward and her reflexes are fast enough to steer them away from an incoming truck speeding towards them on the opposite lane, the honking horn blurring past them. Either the driver’s deaf and can’t hear the sirens, or he doesn’t give a damn about the GCPD, like most of the city tends to do.

Gordon gives off a relieved sigh as his knuckles whiten on the grab handles.

“Sorry, Sir,” O’Hara meekly apologizes.

Gordon forgives her in silence, then switches the channels on his device. “Barnes, I need Cavalry Unit 71 to round the corner along Giordano Park. What’s our distance ‘till Trigate Bridge?”

“About one point six miles, Sir,” Barnes replies.

Gordon’s hopes fall. “Dammit, at the rate we’re going, we’re not gonna make it.”

Suddenly, the static on the radio activates itself, earning curious looks from both Gordon and O’Hara as they both sit there motionless, afraid. Then the static clears up, and it speaks.

“Not while I’m here,” a growling discordant voice announces, and it sounds more like a fiend than a man.

O’Hara’s obviously displeased, and holds the button that activates the microphone. “Identify yourself; you are unauthorized personnel interfering with GCPD communication lines, I order you to—”

“Cut it, O’Hara!” Gordon yaps, and O’Hara’s quick to remove her hand from the mic; he presses it in her stead. “Took you long enough.”

O’Hara’s eyes suddenly widen.

“Jim,” the monster’s voice replies. “They’re headed to Trigate.”

“Yeah, kinda got that established,” Gordon sighs as he stares at the armored vehicle still so many meters away. “They’re closing that distance and we aren’t gaining ground.”

“You will soon. Redirect the GCPD units to Otisburg Avenue’s shortcut, let them meet you at the Bridge.”

Gordon’s slowly getting the picture; they were going to corner them. “So who’s gonna give them the chase?”

“Leave it to me.”

O’Hara frowns. “But what about the Cavalry?”

There’s a pause. Suddenly, the growl of an engine echoes through Main Street; then from the corner alleyway in front of them, a monster of an automobile skids into the race before the GCPD, nearly stopping O’Hara and the rest in their tracks. Sleek and yet edged, black as the night shadows, low enough near the ground and yet massive enough to intimidate all other cars in the traffic around them. Its engine turbines roar, threatening any other vehicle around it.

The voice of the devil in Gordon’s car speaks. “I _am_ the cavalry.”

And in an instant, its turbines spit fire, zooming away, leaving the GCPD instantly in the dust.

Gordon and O’Hara sit there, foolishly looking on as the pursuit is no longer theirs. After a concerned amount of static reaches Gordon’s radio, he switches it to all channels.

“Cavalry Unit,” he announces, and the word ‘Cavalry’ sounds wrong on his tongue now, “this is Commissioner Gordon. There’s been a change in course. Reroute to the shortcut on Otisburg Avenue; we’ll catch the dirty crooks there.”

O’Hara leads them along the thinner roads, silent as she drives, only interrupted by the occasional report or query from the officers.

“So,” Gordon says once there’s a proper silence. “What’d I tell you?”

“Well, Sir,” O’Hara’s smirk is wide, and her confidence is sparked again. “You weren’t lying about the car.”

And indeed he wasn’t. Quick are the men to realize that it’s no longer the GCPD on their tail, but instead it’s now a Bat. They know it isn’t going to be easy, and yet they use the same tactic: the machine gun at the open door of the armored car empties all its rounds targeting the very obvious bulletproof glass, aiming for the hole-resistant tires, or at least trying to dent the exterior of the car.

The Bat could smirk if he wanted to. The machine was built for chases like these. It’s almost pathetic.

Once the mercenaries are exhausted of their bullets, he watches as they now begin to unload an armada of guns and other weaponry. The smart lenses on his car camera highlight the green target of the cash at the very front. To make the engine explode would cause the money to combust, and with Matt Walker dead, there’s no more trail for him to go by other than the cash.

That and the men would be dead. No killing, right? The rule.

It’s a battle of resistance, trying his best not to flip on the activation switch of the turrets. He simply brings up the multiple-communication lines as he attempts not to let the impostors hit pedestrians.

“Alfred,” he speaks into one channel, “how much longer until Trigate?”

“Six hundred and fifty six yards,” Alfred replies. “Approximately fifty seconds.”

It comes to him so suddenly and so late he’s smacking himself in the head for being too thoughtless to remember it. “Bring up a schedule for the lifting of Trigate’s drawbridge.”

“It’ll start to be raised at 8:30 PM.”

8:30 PM; that’s in forty-seven seconds. “They’re gonna try to use the drawbridge to escape.”

“I suggest you budget your time wisely, Sir. You can go fast, but not fast enough to make that far a jump if timed wrong.”

He makes a mental note and speaks into another channel. “Jim, where are you?”

“We’ve just arrived,” Gordon replies. “Do we set up a barricade?”

He checks the clock; thirty seconds left. “There won’t be enough time. Ambush them if you can.”

“Copy that,” Jim says, and his line goes dead.

In the distance of the road, beyond the flying bullets, the Bat can see Trigate Bridge, the mechanisms already working in clockwork to slowly begin to split the bridge in two right down the middle. Gordon’s already there, the GCPD surrounding the entrance-way to the road. But instead of slowing down, the armored car seems to speed up even faster, planning to ram into the GCPD’s blockade of cars. The Bat’s quick to react and pushes a button that launches a grappling hook that latches itself onto the armored car door, then quickly puts the wheels in reverse and pulls backward as the armored car fights back, burning tire marks onto the asphalt the harder it tugs.

But, just like him, these soldiers come crazy prepared too. From their extensive tool shed, one of the bigger men brings out a laser cutter.

The Bat blinks. A fucking handheld state-of-the-art laser cutter.

Before he could do anything, the bright red beam begins to slice through the wire of the grappling hook as the armored car continues to run against the pull. The GCPD has all of their guns aimed at the getaway. The drawbridge continues to lift.

But the grappling hook's cord finally snaps, and all hell breaks loose.

The Bat hits the breaks once he feels the tension split, jerking him backwards and nearly ramming into some newspaper stall down the street. The armored car runs as fast as it could forward, ignoring all the GCPD’s constant firing and commands. Sprinting up, it bursts through the barricade on Trigate and flies through the air, landing with sparks and bouncing tires on the other side, far from the reach of the Dark Knight and the GCPD.

That’s twice he let thieves get away in the same week. _Twice._

Gordon gets out of the car and runs his hands through his hair in frustration as the officers around him begin to confer with each other over what to write in the official report. O’Hara nearly stumbles out of the driver’s seat and simply dusts her uniform, watching as the getaways drive off into the night.

“Jim,” his radio speaks like a foul phantom, and he clicks it to answer.

“Yeah?” he says, his shocked eyes not wavering from the fleeing criminals.

“Not all’s lost.”

Jim looks for the nearest rooftop, and he sees a shadow stalking atop a cornice, their eyes locking.

“What do you mean?” Jim asks into his radio, but it almost seems like they’re talking face to face.

“I was able to retrieve one of the dollar bills that flew off during the pursuit. There’s still a lead, and I’ll be the one to track it down.”

Jim doesn’t even want to know how, he’s just grateful that it happened. “What do we do to even thank you?”

“You don’t have to.”

Gordon gives the shadow a nod, and it’s almost as if the shadow responded with a nod of its own. The Commissioner’s attention is diverted as he begins to chat with the police officers and other media reporters already swarmed in the area. He knows that once he faces back, both the Bat and the tank will have vanished in a flash.

* * *

Unlike in the city streets, when he drives along Gotham’s secluded rural landscapes, the thunder the car roars into the silence is louder, especially in the blanket of the night. He brings up Alfred’s communications line.

“Yes, Sir?” Alfred asks.

“I’ve put a tracking device on the armored car,” the Bat asks, and he waits a moment.

“Uhm…I’ve pinpointed its location,” Alfred sounds confused, and that doesn’t make him comfortable. “But unless the target’s at Griffin’s Coffee down at Main Street, then they don’t know that you’ve tracked them.”

They were able to remove the tracking device. He grips the steering wheel with defeat.

“I don’t think this is the ordinary type of criminal,” Alfred continues as the Bat turns the invisible corner, driving him directly into the lake in front of his house.

“It’s not the ordinary type of criminal, Alfred,” he corrects, and the lake seems to part then sink, and a ramp rises to provide an entrance for him. “It’s the interesting type.”


	4. Most People Would Rather Give Than Get Affection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A covetous discovery. A lesson in flight. A change of motive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pay very close attention to the text; the tenses of the verbs will shift to past tense at one point in this chapter, and this will happen again in other succeeding chapters. It’ll be incredibly important to understanding the flow of the plot, whether the event you’re reading is a flashback or part of the main continuity. 
> 
> Oh, yeah. There will be flashbacks.

“Gotcha.”

Alfred looks up from his laboratory desk inside the cave to glance over at Bruce, sitting at the computer. “Did we get something, Sir?”

Bruce’s expression is enough for Alfred to drop what he’s doing to watch behind the computer chair. On the monitor is the serial number of the only hundred dollar bill that flew out of the armored car from the failed chase only a few evenings ago, identified by the computer’s advanced ultraviolet scanners. Once Bruce hits a button, numbers zoom downward on the monitors, paired with locations, addresses, banks, and names.

“According to the bank this bill was issued from,” Bruce explains as the numbers start to slow down as they hit the bottom, “these are all of the transactions, exchanges, and withdrawals that the bill’s undergone ever since the date of its printing.”

Alfred’s eyes look through the names, seeing if he can identify any familiar ones. “And this is cause for attention why, exactly?”

“Look here,” Bruce types in a command, and the list scrolls to the very bottom, where the last entry was made: under the name of Matthew Franklin Walker. “The last recorded pass the bill had was that through Matt Walker, made when he withdrew the eighty-five thousand from his wife’s bank account.”

Alfred frowns. “We never tried accessing Mrs. Walker’s accounts before, have we?”

“I tried once, when Gordon first told me she was getting extra funds,” Bruce closes Matt Walker’s window. “It didn’t work. Apparently, she used anonymous bank accounts that flew under our radar, too incognito for even Wayne Tech to detect at first glance. The computer read it as non-existent.” 

Alfred figures that the explanation is enough. “So what’s the interesting bit?”

Bruce clicks the name above Matt Walkers’. “Second-to-the-last entry, right before Walker. None other than our rising billionaire of Gotham.”

“Mr. Bryant,” Alfred finishes, as Bruce brings up the censored bank account files of the young entrepreneur, together with some of the news feed regarding his recent success at the gala, and other CCTV feed of him spotted at banks all over the city. “So Mrs. Walker really _was_ his mistress; the stolen money leads back to his own pockets. So why do I feel that you aren’t calling this cased closed just yet?”

“Because of this,” Bruce brings up a pile of data from the background and enlarges it. “Look here. Says that the input of his funds totals to about fifty million dollars. Then you have his debts, project funding, wages, what have you: and it gets reduced to about forty grand. But computer analysis detects another possible record that could be eating his money, and whatever it is, it’s eating a lot. About forty percent of that fifty million vanishes into some unknown account.”

Alfred frowns. “Can’t you access his budgetary funds? The computer can hack into his bank withdrawals and details.”

“And that’s the problem.” Bruce tries to bring out his bank details, but all that invades the screen is flashing warning text.

ERROR NO. 6001:  
ACCESS DENIED. UNABLE TO DECRYPT DATA.  
[ERROR_DECRYPTION_FAILED (32x1279)]

Alfred looks dumbfounded. “Impossible. The computer’s designed to bypass any digital security functions.”

“Yeah, but not Theodore's. We’re forgetting that the flagship of his company is the creation of secure web spaces and the strongest firewalls the world’s ever seen. I’m not surprised that we can’t enter.”

In spite of their loss, Alfred crosses his arms triumphantly, his tone mocking. “That’s a shame. If only we had the blueprints to the skeleton key of his tech so we could get to the bottom of this. I wonder who it’s with now.”

Bruce sighs exasperatedly. The both know it’s with a cat burglar he’d rather not think about at the moment.

“For now, we _don’t_ need that skeleton key,” Bruce says more to himself rather than to Alfred as he types away, bringing up Bryant Industries’ security channel as he begins to type in decryption commands. “The security cameras inside his building are the only things I can look into now. It’s not a lot, but it could give us a lead.”

Alfred’s silent as the computer gives a few beeps, allowing him access into Bryant’s live CCTV feed. In an instant, hundreds of camera views and angles throughout Bryant Industries flash onscreen, and Bruce scrolls through the menu as he checks the floors that could possibly hold something of interest. He clicks the window labelled PENTHOUSE, and all the cameras shift from the boring views of the cubicles and offices to multiple corridors and luxurious interior of a stylish home.

“Well, he certainly has modest taste,” Alfred comments on one particular angle; the camera faces down a long hallway, beautiful potted plants on either side of the pillars, with a Jackson Pollock masterpiece framed at the very end.

Bruce flips a few switches and turns a knob, activating volume sensors. Soon, the wavelengths at the bottom of the screen begin to react to something in one of the rooms, and he tries to track it down. It’s the voice of Theodore Bryant.

“You know…” Theodore’s saying, “I’m tired. I’m fucking sick and tired of this bullshit.”

Bruce finds Theodore in the minibar, viewing through the camera overlooking the whole expanse of the enormous living room. Another angle closer to the minibar shows an obviously drunk Theodore, still in his suit from last night, his tie discarded and the buttons on his dress shirt open, emptying what looks like his seventh glass of his second Chateau Margaux bottle.

“I don’t get it…” Theodore drinks another glass again. “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

“Just means you aren’t as good as you thought, Teddy,” a familiar voice replies, and Bruce’s expression hardens; his head immediately shoots up and zooms in on the overhead camera.

Moving towards the bar, a short-haired woman wearing a black evening dress saunters towards Theodore, draping her arms around him as she rubs his back. He looks as if he doesn’t mind her presence as his head goes to rest on the countertop; a sound escapes him like he’s crying.

“Hush, now, Teddy,” she coos, like a mother would to a child throwing a tantrum, as she hugs him from behind arms wrapped around his waist. “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

Theodore only groans in pain as a response.

Alfred glances over at Bruce, who’s leaning forward close to the monitors, one hand tapping thoughtfully on his chin, the other gripping the armrest incredibly hard that the butler is afraid he’s going to yank it off when he stands up. His focused expression is unreadable, but his eyes are steely, his brows furrowed, lips pressed into a thin line. It’s not a pleased expression.

“Are you alright, Sir?” Alfred asks half out of concern, half out of amusement.

“Never better,” Bruce huffs, obviously lying.

“I can’t do this anymore…” Theodore silently sobs, then he hiccups. “I’m a failure, Selina…I…”

“Come on, Teddy, don’t think like that,” Selina coos, pressing her lips to his neck. “I could make you forget about all that, just for tonight…”

Theodore groans, but doesn’t give into her embrace. “Selina…shit…”

Alfred could see from the corner of his eye Bruce clenching his jaw.

Suddenly, Theodore lashes out and pushes Selina away from him, sending her backwards and toppling across the side of the minibar. “No! I can’t afford any more mistakes!”

With a surprised yelp, Selina falls through the stools on the minibar, managing to restore her balance at the last chair. Bruce stiffens, like an alert animal; it looks like he’s seconds away from putting his fist through the screen. Alfred puts a hand on his shoulder, but it doesn’t help to ease him.

Selina’s shock is obvious in her eyes. “What’s gotten into you, Ted?!”

The remorse comes back and Theodore sinks into his seat. “Fuck, Selina…I-I’m sorry…I just…I wish I could avoid all this…”

She approaches him again. “Avoid what?”

At this point, Theodore is murmuring into his drink, still audible enough to be picked up by the computer. “I should’ve never…I should’ve asked him first. I shouldn’t have agreed to that deal with Wayne…and now he’ll have my head. He’s gonna kill me…”

The tension leaves Bruce’s body and it’s replaced with genuine attention.

“Who’s gonna kill you?” Selina asks.

Theodore doesn’t answer directly. “Once I put my money in that prototype safe, he’s gonna come for me…I shouldn’t have moved without his say…they’re gonna replace me…they’re gonna put someone in my stead. Just because some jealous asshole murdered poor Clarissa…my sweet Clarissa…”

Selina puts a hand on Theodore’s shoulder. “Teddy?”

Theodore ignores her. “Just because I attracted the attention of the Batman…they’ll throw me to the dogs, Selina! To the _fucking dogs!”_

And Theodore grabs his glass and throws it across the room, slamming it into the wall and shattering it mercilessly. Selina from the side flinches, while Theodore begins to sob for real. With a few commands, Bruce disconnects from Bryant Industries’ CCTVs and stands up, distressed, pacing across the floor of the cave.

“Master Wayne?” Alfred asks, worried.

Bruce stops, facing away from his butler, towards the armory in the lower floor through the glass. He stands still in thought, the flowing of the waterways beneath them filling in the silence as Alfred waits patiently for the machinery in Bruce’s mind to work.

“Someone’s got Theodore like a puppet, Alfred,” Bruce crosses his arms. “Playing him like a pawn in some kind of game.”

Alfred pockets his hands. “And you think that this mystery puppeteer is the one Mr. Bryant’s been giving money to?”

“It’s worth investigating,” Bruce turns around.

But both of them know that this case is only interesting enough to keep Bruce’s mind off other more distracting things, memories that he’s too tired to relive.

* * *

The night was young. And so was he, so long ago.

Wayne Tower was once the tallest building in the area around Old Gotham, giving off a view that stretched as far as the docks in downtown, past that even all the way to the great stretch of the Atlantic. As a young boy, he was constantly brought up to the viewing deck to see the sunset sink behind the waters, casting the city of Gotham in an almost ethereal glow. His parents would hold parties on the rooftops, lit by the sparkling lights of the distance down below and illuminated by the stars above. He had always been enamored by the view.

That was before, when he didn’t know what corruption and villainy lurked in those shadows he used to be fascinated by.

This was now the twenty-ninth time he stood on the very top of the skyscraper; not as a child dreaming to see _The Mask of Zorro,_ but as a Bat. He pressed the side of his head to activate his earpiece, and tried to move around to see if the antennas in his ears could pick up the signal all the way from Wayne Manor.

“Alfred?” His voice was his own, without any microphone or modulators to disguise his identity even further. The Bat was a new player to Gotham’s world, and was on the road to proving himself the king of the game; his speech needed no mask.

The static was there, but it interfered little. “Yes, Sir?”

For a moment, he lost his line of sight in the traffic downtown. “What’s the agenda for tonight?”

“Let’s see…” he could hear the clacking of keys in the background as Alfred scanned the city. “There’s a robbery in progress at 42nd Street. The GCPD are on their way, but you could beat them to it if you’re fast enough.”

“By gliding,” he prompted.

There was silence on the other end of the line.

The Bat frowned behind the armor of his cowl. “What’s wrong?”

“Sir, the last time we tried gliding, you were confined to the bed because of a broken leg and several arm fractures. Then the doctors became awfully suspicious of the lack of cartilage in your knees and the damage done to your shoulders and joints.”

Oh. Right.

“In the six weeks we’ve been doing this, that was the closest anyone’s gotten to knowing, and the closest I saw to watching you nearly fall seven hundred feet off the old Clocktower.” The Bat shook his head as Alfred clicked his tongue behind his mic. “If not for that grappling gun, well…”

The Bat shifted his footing, one knee facing up, ready to dive. “I’m not gonna get any better if I don’t try.”

Alfred sighed, defeated. “Alright, Master Wayne. Just please be careful.”

“In this line of work, Alfred,” the Bat readied his stance, “there’s no such thing as careful.”

And he leaped, diving downwards into the night embrace of Gotham City, the adrenaline coursing through his veins, the high of the evening pumping his heart. The speeding winds against his face were rejuvenating, heightening his senses as the glowing lights began to warn him of the approaching asphalt streets. Closer, closer—

_Now._

The electric currents in his gloves grabbed the edges of his cape and the fabric stiffened, pushing him upward suddenly and swiftly. The wind became much calmer as the draft of the city beneath him pushed him, rising upward, falling slowly. Gotham became a scenery stroll, the evening dancing on the horizon, the darkness of the city still looming, but almost picturesque against the beauty of the skyline he was so close to touching. It reminded him of what he was fighting for, what he will continue to fight for: reinforcing the fact that Gotham’s soul can be good, can be as alluring and beautiful as its night skies.

But just as he was admiring the view, the sudden shadow of the building in front of him caught him off-guard. Too late to pull the grappling gun from his belt, he anchored the hook to the incorrect edge of the cornice and he was pulled up along a wrong angle, slamming his solar plexus into some marble sculpture of a gargoyle and plummeting him down towards the city, with pain coursing through his torso and his back facing the streets.

Panic gripped him, but he tried to remain calm as he thought of a plan. To shift to his front would take too much time, and he was quick to measure the lighting of the streets below him to know he wasn’t going to fall on a street lamp, but instead on a building.

Just as he reached that conclusion, his back collided with the glass of some sort of skylight. He grabbed onto an edge of the roof, trying to pull himself up, but the pain in his back urged his fingers to let go and he ended up succumbing to the agony, continuing to fall down onto the interior of the building. He hit the floor with a painful thud, groaning as he got up, shaking his throbbing head. If not for the Kevlar, his skull would’ve split open and his neck would’ve snapped.

His surroundings weren’t unfamiliar. The sky high ceiling (with a now broken skylight), marble tiling, and neoclassical architecture clued him in that he was in the middle of some museum display or old bank.

That was when he heard a voice.

“Always knew handsome angels fell from the sky.”

He whirled around to see a violet shadow standing next to an already open safe. The light from the city spilling inside was enough to slowly illuminate the stranger. First, thigh-high black boots, matching elbow-length gloves with sharp claws tipping the fingers, and a tight purple one-piece jumpsuit highlighting every curve along the body. Then the figure reared its head into the light: behind a mask that had cat-like ears on its head, a mask that kept curled and untamed hair flowing at the nape, was a fair face, red lips, and dangerous green eyes.

He stopped. She stopped.

He realized that she was midway through stuffing the safe’s dollars into a sack. She realized that he was none other than the new Bat of Gotham.

He scowled. She smirked.

He readied his stance, fists clenched, ready to fight. His voice comes in a growl. “Identify yourself.”

She swiftly slung the sack over her shoulders, claws sharp, ready to flee. Her voice comes in a taunt. “Meeeow.”

* * *

He glances up at the skylight which he fell from nearly twenty years ago. It’s been repaired more than a hundred times within the last decade. But instead of standing there uselessly threatening a fleeing cat burglar, he’s watching as Theodore Bryant’s patrons congratulate him on the first installed prototype of his biotech safe displayed in the Gotham City Bank. In comparison to the small unit from the publicity gala, this one’s a towering marvel, stuck inside one of the walls of the many hallways; still, it doesn’t stop the flashing cameras and hounding press from getting to know the scoop from Gotham’s youngest billionaire. From the lobby where they held the celebration, it’s visible still, with all of its dials and cranks keeping Bryant’s own test money away from any criminal who dare challenge its prowess.

Theodore Bryant’s up on top of the podium, answering questions that the media had regarding his newest project. Meanwhile, as Bruce looks for a seat in the press conference, he manages to find the only empty one next to the woman he wanted to see last.

“Mr. Wayne,” Selina greets without any expression as he sits down on the chair next to her.

“Miss Kyle,” he returns, fixing his waistcoat as he watches another reporter ask Theodore a question that escapes his attention.

His traitorous eyes start to scan what she’s wearing: a simple black cocktail dress that goes up to the middle of her thighs, with matching pumps and a blazer that acts more like a shawl than a jacket. She’s focused more on whatever Theodore’s saying, but he can tell by the way her eyes dart back and forth that she knows he’s looking at her.

“Found something you like?” her red lips smirk. “It’s rude to stare at a lady.”

He tears away his gaze and stares at the safe behind Theodore, and he notices from the corner of his eye that she’s doing the same thing. “Plan on settling any scores later tonight?”

Her eyes narrow. “It’s quite tempting.”

He fights the urge to look at her expression. “And here I thought you put that in the past.”

She slumps in her chair. “I did. Then turns out that it’s more complicated than I thought, and I’m dragged back into another mess.”

There’s a pause between the both of them as another news team bombards Theodore with more questions.

“I was supposed to hit his cash the other night, you know,” Selina says quietly. “Get the serial numbers, track them down. There’s something wrong with where Teddy’s money is going. I think someone’s controlling his every move.”

“I know,” Bruce replies.

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Because Theodore’s place has security cameras. You had to expect that one way or another.”

Selina’s eyes light up. “So you know about that conversation.”

He remembers how close Theodore was to Selina, how he threw her across the bar and smashed a glass in front of her; his muscles tense and he tries not to let it show. “Yeah, I know about it.”

Selina seems to turn to him. “Hope I didn’t make you too jealous.”

Bruce scoffs. “Why should I be? You’re his girlfriend.”

“And your ex.”

He sighs. “That’s behind us.”

“Is it, now?”

He hides a frown. It’s supposed to be.

She smiles. “But aren’t you proud of me?”

“For what?”

“For doing something that you ‘good guys’ would do, for once.”

In some way, she’s right; knowing Selina as well as he used to, she could have stolen something from Theodore on the first date, goof around with him for a couple of days with fancy dinners and lavish parties, then flee like a culprit just after the first night of sex, never to be seen again. It’s incredible how she’s stuck around this long to detect something’s actually wrong with Theodore, that his money is vanishing suddenly down the drain and that it’s enough to make her take action.

She’s concerned about the younger billionaire; he dreads to ask why.

“I guess I’m proud,” he says, his tone making him sound half-assed about it.

“Mhmm,” she nods, her voice so closely sardonic, “you sound _really_ genuine about it.”

He turns to look at her, his face suddenly closer than he thought. “I’m _serious,_ Selina.”

Their lips are inches away from each other, and if some random reporter or another sponsor sitting next to him was to even nudge him a little, he’d be kissing Theodore Bryant’s apparent girlfriend…in the middle of his own press conference for his own project, right where the media wants Bruce to be. He supresses a shiver once he feels her breath on his mouth.

She’s reading his eyes and understands the picture he’s forming in his mind, and gives another one of her signature smirks. “Getting excited now, are we, Mr. Wayne?”

He feels his face heat up as he collapses onto his chair, exhaling through his nose.

“Now, I’d like to call on my good friend and my main benefactor for this project,” Theodore announces, looking down at Bruce from the small makeshift stage and gesturing for him to join him. “Bruce Wayne, everybody!”

Bruce sighs and gets up, looking back at an amused Selina waving goodbye at him. He fakes a smile as he walks up the stage and is greeted by the flashing lights and frantic reporters, exchanging a handshake with Theodore for the publicity photos that he’s sure will appear on the business section of _The Gazette_ tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Selina’s Catwoman costume in the flashback is actually the purple one from the 90s; if you have trouble visualizing it, [here’s a handy-dandy render](https://www.artstation.com/artwork/e0QeY) by Kenneth Doyle on ArtStation, which I thought was pretty spot-on regarding how I thik it would look like.
> 
> Our villain will be revealed in the next chapter. Before I reveal him, however, I’ll give you a few clues so you can feel kind of smart about it when I finally tell you:
> 
>   1. He’s part of the original Rogues Gallery, so he’s not an OC villain.
>   2. I’ve mentioned his alter ego name in this chapter once. 
>   3. Look at the titles of all of the chapters.
> 

> 
> Some of you have probably figured out who it is already, and I sincerely hope you’re right.


	5. Fear is Pain Arising from the Anticipation of Evil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A suspicion game over dinner. An unexpected visitor. A threat from the shadows. A return of an old friend.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, look to the tenses of verbs; it’ll identify when the flashback starts and ends. Also, in the flashback, watch out for the reference to a certain type of Robin bird. 
> 
> If you have trouble imagining Ben Affleck as a young Bruce Wayne, I highly suggest watching his self-directed movie _Live by Night (2016),_ where he looks significantly younger, dresses like a young Bruce Wayne, and still keeps to his cynical, dead-pan, and practical attitude. The noir feel of the movie is something else to marvel at too.
> 
> Let’s see if your guesses are correct. Pay close attention to the quotation marks as well; it will signify whether the character is only speaking or quoting something.

Bruce Wayne: handsome billionaire, notorious playboy, generous philanthropist, and now her current boyfriend.

They had been dating for nearly four months, and she had to admit that the life if a billionaire’s girlfriend wasn’t half bad. The exclusive parties and galas in the Skyline, lavish gifts of diamond necklaces and designer linen gowns every week, the incredibly mind-blowing sex; though she knew it wasn’t going to last for long, she was going to enjoy it while it was hers.

He was nice enough, charming, kind, benevolent; it wasn’t much of a stretch to believe that every single woman in Gotham wanted him. And while she felt she could trust him with everything in her life, there was one problem.

He didn’t know about her night life, her escapades on rooftops and thrilling encounters with the Bat of Gotham. Maybe he was too wrapped up in his rich boy life to ever care about her, his head full of bubbling champagne and nose in women’s lingerie that she was going to be just another name in his checklist of Gotham’s floozies he had fucked. She didn’t mind, as long as he didn’t know.

But the awful feeling was that she felt he _knew._ Somehow, he did, even though she knows he shouldn’t have, since she was usually so careful.

And she was determined to find out if her guess was correct. Curiosity kills cats, and she’s not new to how that proverb usually came back to kick her ass.

So the perfect opportunity presented itself when he invited her to dinner at Wayne Manor, a house that she’s seen multiple times on their many evenings together but never really had the chance to explore. The fact that she hasn't known more than five rooms in that behemoth of a house made her even more suspicious over what he could be hiding.

The evening was already running smoothly. The waiting gentleman as always, he picked her up from her rental car in a simple yet probably pricey Kiton tuxedo, and upon entering the grand lobby, the butler Alfred took her coat and guided them to the lavish dining hall, where, by the light of the chandelier overhead, they ate a serving of divine gourmet steak and red wine, so delicious that she moaned once the food hit her tongue, earning a look from Bruce.

“Sorry,” she quickly said, chewing as fast as she could. “It’s just…God, this is amazing.”

“Yeah,” he looked back at his food. “It’s a miracle what Alfred can do with a couple of leftovers in the fridge.”

Her lashes curled downward in a slow blink, only rising to lock eyes with him, glancing from the right of the head of the long mahogany table, where he sat.

“So, Selina…” he started, “I never really got to ask you something.”

She put down her fork, giving him her full attention.

“What do you do for a living?” he asked, leaning forward towards her.

Oh, shit. She tried to make sure that it didn’t look like her face just suddenly fell.

“I used to work the noon shift on Baxter’s Diner on East End,” she answered, honestly. “I’m sort of in-between jobs at the moment.”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “You don’t work any night shifts? Go out into the cold wilderness of midnight Gotham?”

She shook her head as her eyes narrowed. The conversation was now turning _way_ to close for comfort. “Why would you think that?”

He waved his hand, as if to dismiss it. “Nothing, you just strike me as a…evening prowler sort of person.”

A smirk grew on her face. “Quite a far cry from your usual target of stockbroker’s daughters and socialite bimbos, don’t you think?”

Then again, Vicki Vale, the woman he had dated prior to Selina, also was neither a stockbroker's daughter or a socialite bimbo.

His lips quirked upward. “I wanted to be a little adventurous for a while.”

It was now her turn to lean in closer, her fork waving in front of his face. “And you think I’m an adventurous type of girl?”

“You’re giving me that impression.”

She poked her fork into a piece of meat that he had cut on his plate and placed it in her mouth, chewing it in front of the billionaire as he watched silently, their eyes locked, his expression unreadable. It was her turn to ask the questions now.

“So, Bruce…” she said once she swallowed, being careful with how she said his name, as she was used to calling him ‘Mr. Wayne’ and was still getting to know the familiar feel. “You never really told me why you have such a big house, for such small company.”

He leaned back into his chair and stared at her. “I’m rich and easily bored. I think that's enough of a reason.”

Her brows lifted. “Really? Just you and your dear Alfred in this huge mansion?”

“It isn’t just the two of us. I have a ward.”

She blinked. “A ward?”

He nodded. “Richard Grayson; a small boy, twelve years old and incredibly gifted.”

Apparently to the great Bruce Wayne, legal files and waiting processes for adoption were much preferred over the normal route of marriage then a kid; guess he fell in love with his playboy lifestyle that much that he feared settling down. “Already thinking of heirs to your company? You aren’t that old a man.”

“Please,” and he takes a sip from his tangy Cheval Blanc wine, “in my line of work, you’ll never know when you’ll pass on the mantle.”

She felt like he was insinuating more than what he said, but she couldn’t find out what exactly he was talking about inside his speech. Sure, being a billionaire could be _kind of_ dangerous, if that’s what he meant, but he probably was referring to something else, something just outside her reach and yet close enough for her to smell.

“One more question,” he said again after a brief silence.

“Shoot away,” she replied.

“Do you like cats?”

She smiled, but she wasn’t happy; now, more than ever, was she convinced he knew about her secret. “More than the usual adventurous girl.”

* * *

It’s getting almost pathetic, seeing that face in the mirror of his bedroom every day. He looks tired: graying hair, scarred chest, and sinewy hands staring back at him in his reflection. He’s only lucky that he wasn’t lazy to shave earlier that morning. His nimble fingers work upward, slowly buttoning his crisp and freshly ironed dress shirt, the cloudy sun casting long shadows on the surface of the lake and penetrating the dim atmosphere of his glass abode, just a little.

Then the doorbell chimes throughout the wide house, and the sound is so unfamiliar to him that it nearly startled him. He hears Alfred get up from whatever he was doing to answer the door. As he finishes rolling up the long sleeves up to his elbows and decides to leave the collar unbuttoned, he hears his butler call to him from the hallway.

“Master Wayne?”

He glances. “Yeah?”

Alfred’s head is at the door, his expression just a notch below what he would look like in the event a Parademon would crash into the fireplace. “You have a guest.”

He sighs as he walks into the hallway. “You know I don’t entertain guests anymore, Alfred.”

“But this one’s a special case,” Alfred replies, then ducks back into the kitchen. “I’ll go get something for you both to drink.”

Before he could even protest, he’s already standing in the living room, and the figure on his favorite armchair gets up to greet him, wrapped in a stylish black trench coat and matching gloves, lissome frame with a pixie haircut and a gorgeous face. History repeats itself, they lock eyes, standing about a meter away from each other, and his chest tightens as a painful silence permeates the air around them.

He stops. She stops.

He tries his best not to show how much his eyes soften.

“How did you find this place?” he asks; he sounds like he’s interrogating her.

“Nice to see you too, handsome,” Selina answers, her lips curling into a smile.

That pet name had always been the death of him. “You didn’t answer the question.”

“You of all people should know I have a special talent finding out where rich people live.”

He ends up sighing, sitting on the couch from across her as she sits straight, her posture taut, compacted, on the armchair he had slept on more than his actual bed. It’s strange seeing her so rigid when she would take any opportunity to sprawl over a nice long sofa. (He’s suddenly reminded of how much he knows about her, and he scolds himself for it.)

Alfred comes in from the kitchen and places down two cups of something translucent and hot on the coffee table in front of them. She’s quick to pick it up and inhales the smell, her smile growing once she gingerly takes a sip.

“Peppermint tea,” she muses aloud in front of the butler. “You still remember my favorite. You’re an absolute blessing, Alfred.”

Alfred smiles, and it suddenly occurs to Bruce that it’s been so long since he’s seen Alfred truly smile. “You flatter me, Miss Kyle.”

And as Alfred exits, he looks to Bruce and nods his head towards the lady, his look commanding, as if he was expecting him to propose to her. Bruce only shakes his head subtly in response as the steps of his butler fade into the hallway.

“I assume you aren’t here for a cup of tea,” he says.

“It’s enough to come back for a second time, though,” she drinks another sip then puts it down, marveling at the house. “It’s not as grandiose and as complicated as Wayne Manor, but I’m sure you have hundreds of gizmos in these walls. It’s quaint, simple, Farnsworth-esque. I like it.”

He looks at her with an expression that almost commands her to spill out whatever she’s dragging on. Eventually, she gets the hint and realizes she can’t continue to hide it, and her hand goes into her coat, bringing out a familiar hard drive with the symbol of Bryant Industries on its silver casing.

The Bryant Industries skeleton key blueprints.

Bruce blinks, trying to hide how his breath hitched in his throat.

“I came to give you back this,” she tilts her head and puts the hard drive on the coffee table, right between their cups of tea. “Well, not really ‘give it back’; after all, it was never yours.”

He wants to comment that it was never _hers_ either, but he holds his tongue. “Why?”

“I know you want it to get into Bryant’s high-tech security. It’s a hard job trying to crack that wall without getting noticed; believe me, I tried. Besides, I don’t exactly have the gear or the high-speed supercomputer to work this thing’s magic.”

He watches her every movement, the curling of her fingers against her hands, the shift in her shoulders, the way her eyes look at the reflection of the house against the lake. Besides the maturity in her high cheekbones and smooth skin and the chop of her hair, not much has changed. Black still looks good on her.

“I know you well enough that gifts like these usually come with a return favor,” he says, then regrets for saying he knows her well. “What do you want?”

She pauses and looks down, as if she’s framing the sentence carefully in her mind, then locks eyes with him, her conviction fierce. “I want in on the Bryant case.”

He crosses his legs, leaning back into his couch. He’s half grateful and half disappointed that she didn’t say ‘You back.’

“I don’t need help on the Bryant case,” he says, even though he does.

“I don’t care,” she spits back.

“If I refuse?”

“Then you aren’t getting those blueprints.”

“You know I could just grab them from you right now without a fight and send you off to jail.”

“Oh, but I know you won’t.”

She’s right; he won’t.

“Why the sudden change of heart?” he asks again as she takes up her cup of tea and empties it out halfway. “The Selina I was familiar with used to steal from people like Bryant, not help them get out of some money problem.”

She presses her lips together as she sets her cup down again. “Because no matter how rich the asshole, I can’t stand when people have some sort of leverage over others, whether it be dirt or money. And Teddy’s got genuine plans for this city, not like those rich old cronies who think they run this place like it’s one of their companies. I wanna do something about it. I _believe_ in him…and learning how he’s got someone controlling his every move like that, it’s…” she loses the word and shakes her head.

There’s silence between them. Bruce hadn’t touched his tea at all. He’s actually considering taking her in again, despite every single neuron in his brain telling him that’s a bad decision, and he’s usually right about bad decisions. But there’s something inside him telling him that, in some way, she deserved that shot at redemption, after all that hell that he had seen her go through in the past. She's a fighter, and for so long, she's used to running away from her problems, absconding the situation when it needed her the most. And now, while she's ready to actually face the flames, is he really willing to deprive her of that?

“One more question,” he says.

“Shoot away,” she replies.

“Why’d you come back to Gotham?”

Now it’s her turn to stop and think, and after looking at her half-finished tea, she chuckles a little. “It’s actually funny, considering how I’m trying so hard to run away from that life.” And she looks up to meet his eyes. “I came back to try my hand at cracking Bryant’s tech, getting past his firewalls and safe codes. I heard the challenge was legendary, and for a moment, I actually thought I did it. Turns out I can never run away from any kind of mess in this screwed-up city…I can't run away from _anything.”_

He exhales slowly. He can’t tell if she’s lying.

* * *

Bryant dismisses his executives at his meeting door, thanking them for coming to the meeting as they shake his hands and exchange pleasant smiles. The noon lunch gathering had just ended, and the young billionaire was happy to learn that the expected sales for his safes were going to break through his regular safeguarding technology numbers. Though he was supposed to be at the very least ecstatic, he can’t help but not ignore the looming dread at the back of his mind once the last man slips out from the doors.

The room shuts with a thud. Bryant stares at the doors; he could just easily escape, run away downstairs or disappear into an elevator, but he knows his…interested beneficiary probably already had men waiting for him there. The trepidation settles back into his spine as he suppresses a whimper.

He feels a presence looming at the head of the table behind him. And when he turns, the automated blinds in the office all fall shut, encasing the room in darkness, save for the one ominous light above them. A man sits in his chair; though the shadows cover his face, the brown coat he wears is large enough to be caught by the lamp’s dim glow. Bryant feels like he’s going to collapse, and the stranger can sense it, like a dog sniffing out fear.

“‘Wicked men obey from fear, but the good from love,’” the figure announces darkly, his speech slightly muffled from something, but he quotes it perfectly as if he’s reading from a book. “I wonder what that says about you, Theodore. Are you a wicked man?”

Theodore doesn’t answer as the figure leans forward into the light, his face still obscured.

“You must be either wicked or reckless, for being a disobedient cretin,” the figure spits, his voice now vile. “That was _my_ money in your thirty-five thousand dollar pet project with Wayne Enterprises, and it was done so without _my_ say.”

“W-Wait!” Theodore stutters before the figure could even make a move. “There’s a secret shortcut to unlocking it that doesn’t trip any alarms!”

The figure stops, and seems to grin in the shadows. “You’re becoming smart, Theodore. That’s good.”

Theodore timidly brings out a USB drive and slides it across the desk until a gloved hand takes it before it skids off the table. “That’s the authorization key for the prototype safe model.”

The USB is examined in the light. “Any sneaky passwords or laser-light show protocols I should be aware of?”

Theodore shakes his head stiffly. “No, there’s nothing else. Just plug it in and the machines will think that you’re me.”

“Excellent,” the figure drawls before keeping it in one of his many coat pockets. “Still…this little favor you’ve done for me doesn’t excuse your giant mistake from before.”

Theodore’s face pales.

“Your stupid affair with that Clarissa Walker girl has put all the city’s eyes on us,” he sneers, his teeth grinding. “And that car chase with the GCPD only reveals that our night friend’s now interested in this little game you’re trying to hide from the media. So let me ask you something, Theodore: are you _trying_ to expose our friendship to the world? I appreciate that you’re enjoying us being contacts, but I think a little privacy is in order.”

Theodore laughs nervously, the sweat rolling down his neck. “I would never dream of it!”

The sound of a gun cocking echoes in the empty silence, and the muzzle of a M1911 emerges into the light, pointing straight at Theodore's skull. The young billionaire pauses and his legs want to give in under him, his hands trembling at his sides. But before he could even react, the muzzle points upwards instead and shoots at a corner, and in a flurry of small sparks, a CCTV camera is obliterated into little dysfunctional pieces.

“He’s watching us,” the figure warns him, and the chair he’s sitting on shifts as it moves backwards. “So you better not get any bright ideas, or you’ll know what’s coming to you. You should know where you stand.”

Theodore collapses into the ground, finally, as the shadows seem to slowly seethe back into wherever they came from.

“Remember, Theodore,” the figure quotes, much more distant this time. “‘The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.’”

And suddenly, just like that, the blinds in the meeting room come up, bathing the place in sunlight. Theodore’s left afraid that he’s the only one in the room, standing alone with the silence, interrupted only briefly by the dying sparks of his CCTV camera in the corner of the ceiling.

* * *

Bruce leans back curiously on his chair as he watches the dark feed on Bryant’s meeting room CCTV suddenly turn to static on his supercomputer. It’s obvious that the clicking of the gun earlier did the trick. “He’s sabotaged the cameras.”

Alfred huffs, walking over to his desk as he clicks another monitor on the computer, and the uploading process of Bryant’s skeleton key is already fast approaching ninety-nine percent. “Maybe this enemy of Bryant’s is smarter than you thought.”

“The only thing we know is that he’s after us and he’s got Bryant’s money filling his pockets,” Bruce checks the security cameras in the stairwell, and zooms in on a figure descending the staircase, with armed men following close behind. “Look at him.”

He pauses the video feed, and Alfred hangs over the chair as the computer zooms and enhances the footage. Soon the pixels begin to clear up, revealing the daunting build of a man in a long brown trench coat with wide lapels, covering a huge body dressed in Kevlar armor; his red gloves conceal his hands, keeping any inch of skin from being visible. But the most odd aspect about him is the many medical bandages wrapped around his face, skull, and neck, only revealing a sneering mouth and dark eyes, which looked at the camera for the split second of the shot.

“At least he knows how to dress like a villain from Arkham,” Alfred comments as he goes back to his workdesk.

“He quotes Aristotle,” Bruce says. “Which of my enemies quotes Aristotle?”

Alfred turns his head and looks like he’s about to say something, but the sudden alert chirp of the computer notifies them both that the skeleton key blueprints have finished installing. With the press of a button, Bruce activates the skeleton key, and all of Bryant’s files pop up all over his numerous screens, the decryption now successful, as all of the previous files that had been inaccessible are now visible.

“You should really thank Miss Kyle for delivering the skeleton key to you,” Alfred prompts the conversation, carefully watching Bruce shift from the corner of his eye. “We wouldn’t be able to uncover these things without her.”

Bruce stirs at the mention of her. “I think I already did.”

Alfred sighs. “Offering to pay for her cab isn’t the same as expressing your simple gratitude through words.”

Bruce sighs. Earlier, he had walked her to the edge of the property, and neither of them exchanged a word during the duration of those painfully silent ten minutes. When she found a cab, she had denied his offer to pay, and he only watched as the cab drove her off into the noisy mess of Gotham’s skyscrapers in the far distance.

“Sometimes I wonder if you’ll ever let her see this place,” Alfred muses aloud. “This new cave. The League has been here before.”

“The League isn’t Selina,” he nearly retorts; the League is almost as close as she used to be to him, and it almost makes him guilty. “She’ll come in when she’s earned my trust.”

They’re silent. They don’t want to be reminded that it was hard for him to trust her, next to impossible, and yet he had shown her the old cave before the Manor was destroyed. He’s not fond of repeating old mistakes.

“A part of me is concerned whether you’ll keep your promise to her or not,” Alfred breaks the pause, changing the subject.

Bruce is also concerned for that; he’s not new to double-crossing people for his own benefit and for the belief that he has to betray them before they betray him, but there’s a nagging feeling inside him that sincerely believes that Selina really wishes to do this out of the goodness inside her, a change from her thieving ways of the past. He wants to believe there’s a kind side of the thief.

“Guess we’ll find out,” he says.

Once the decryption is complete, his quick scanners skim through the details and find the amount to where most was donated. His eyes narrow once he catches the alarmingly massive figure, given sometime within the week to a bank account that belonged to no registered bank, under an even stranger name.

YXJpc3RvdGxl – TRANSACTION: DEPOSITED $3,200,000.00 IN [UNKNOWN BANK NAME] (last updated six days ago)

“What kind of language is that?” Alfred squints, adjusting his glasses at the screen.

“It’s not a language,” Bruce retypes the text and runs it through his translators. “It’s encoded text, Base64.”

“Funny,” Alfred sighs as the translators run. “And here I thought binary was getting too cliché for us. What does it say?”

They both read the translation silently, and the cave goes quiet, save for the buzzing mechanisms repairing his suit downstairs and the constant running of the waterways around them. While Alfred only stares blankly, Bruce fixes his position in his chair, his eyes wandering over to the camera shot they had taken of the mysterious man, with his identity hidden behind white bandages and a terrifying scowl.

Bruce only faces his butler, his repressed memories from a better childhood before the tragedy flashing through his mind. “I think I know who we’re dealing with here. A new adversary, definitely, but not a new name. Looks like little Tommy’s come back to Gotham."

“Thomas Elliot,” Alfred says. “It’s been too long, though I’d never thought I’d see him again. Not like _that,_ anyway.”

Bruce pauses to look at the screen, then he takes out his phone and the small note he felt Selina slip into the pocket of his jeans a few minutes ago. Dialing the number into his keypad, he hesitates before hitting the call button; she needed to know, but she also didn’t necessarily _have_ to. He debates with himself while Alfred watches him with earnest interest.

“What makes you hesitate, Sir?” Alfred asks once he stops for too long.

“I don’t know,” Bruce finally says, only touching the edge of the screen to make sure it doesn’t black out on him.

“Master Wayne,” Alfred enunciates his words carefully. “Do you have faith in her?”

Bruce blinks slowly. “I want to.”

They both know he isn’t _going to_ have any if he won’t start.

He hits the button and stands up from his chair, pressing the phone to his ear. He paces along the floor until he stands in front of the glass wall, looking down into the garage below. Alfred feels a small light of pride ignite inside him, but he doesn’t show it.

“Selina?” Bruce says, the words racing in his mind. “Yeah, this is Bruce.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can use [this decoder](https://www.base64decode.org/) to feel like Bruce Wayne to find out what the true name of the bank account there means.
> 
> My inspiration for the appearance—both interior and exterior—of the former Wayne Manor has and always will be the lavish Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire. It was used also in Christopher Nolan’s _Batman Begins (2005)_ to display the Jacobean style of the mansion.
> 
> Either way, the villain is Hush, congratulations on your own detective work! I’ve already been dropping hints from the start; I mean, look at your chapter titles! They’re Aristotle quotes!


	6. The More You Know, the More You Know You Do Not Know

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reprise dinner date. A rooftop affair. A revelation of a common enemy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my favorite BatCat kisses comes from Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s _Hush #3,_ and if you know BatCat as well as I think you do, then you’re definitely picturing that kiss in your head. Just watch out for that flashback. I paraphrased most of that dialogue, but quoted a few lines verbatim. See if you can catch which lines.
> 
> Oh, yes, ladies and gentlemen. We've reached a kiss.

Selina’s eyebrow quirks up as she shoves a forkful of spaghetti into her mouth. “Wait, so let me get this straight…Thomas Elliot?”

Bruce looks across the table at her up from his laptop, his own plate of spaghetti touched a grand total of zero times ever since the beginning of dinner. It seemed almost like a page pulled from his fragmented memories: just another one of his countless domestic dinner dates with Selina Kyle, either within the luxurious dining room of Wayne Manor, or at a reservation at Schiavone’s…except that this this is no longer Wayne Manor or Schiavone’s, and the topics of their conversations are no longer about how much they hated the stalking media, how she should stop teasing him (both out of the bedroom and in it), or what the Joker’s next move was going to be.

The clacking of the keyboard seems to reply to Selina ahead of Bruce. “Ever heard of the name before?”

She shrugs. “Once or twice, maybe. Always mentioned within your rich little family circles.”

He takes the wine glass and nearly empties half of the liquid in it in one go. “His father was close with mine. Tommy was a childhood friend, probably the only one I could ever really call a friend during those years.”

She can see why. “I don’t know about you, but being the son of a billionaire can really intimidate a few kids at school.”

“A few meaning most of them.” He shakes his head, almost regretful. “My father didn’t care; he was just happy that his loner son finally found someone he could relate to. In many ways, Tommy was like me: a wealthy, powerful name, a knack for getting into trouble, and he was always so good at those strategy games. He always used to beat me.”

She twirls her fork around some spaghetti. “So what along the line made him a creepier version of the mummy instead of another billionaire bat?

He finally leaves the laptop and touches his fork, but he doesn’t eat, staring instead at his plate as he spins his fork around nothing. “His father was an abusive alcoholic. His mother was from humble beginnings before she married, obsessed with keeping the family name tied to her.”

She deadpans. “And let me guess: she didn’t pack up her things and leave with poor Tommy because she was afraid to lose that lovely Elliot name.”

He looks up to lock eyes with her. “You’re getting better at this.”

She scoffs. “Please, this is Gotham. You don’t expect anything less.” She realizes that she’s only ever touched her spaghetti, and he’s only ever touched his wine. “What happened to them?”

“Car crash, broken breaks, a slam into a bridge pillar on a late Tuesday night. Roger Elliot died instantly on impact; Marla Elliot, though, she was much luckier thanks to the surgery of my father. Even with the cancer she was diagnosed with, she lived long enough until she was murdered in her sleep how many years later.”

She smiles sadly. “Billionaires in this city just love to attract death, don’t they?”

He only looks down at his untouched spaghetti. “He did it.”

The smile vanishes from her face. “What?”

“Tommy sabotaged the brakes on their limousine that night. He wanted to kill them, wanted the Elliot fortune for himself. But with his mother unexpectedly alive and grown increasingly possessive of him, his plan got delayed. Once he was old enough to inherit, she was disappointed in his behavior up until that point and planned to write him out of the will, cut him off from his med school dreams. Didn’t take too much conscience to take a pillow and suffocate her with it one night.”

“Damn,” her face falls and she leans back on her chair. “Why do you think it’s him? It could be any lunatic wearing a brown trench coat and wrapped in toilet paper.”

“He quotes Aristotle,” Bruce says. “Even as a kid, Tommy could cite lines straight from _Nicomachean Ethics_ word for word. He said his mother used to cram it down his throat, some sort of way to help defend him from his father’s abuse, deal with it passively instead of defending him. I don’t think he ever forgave her for it.”

She scoffs. “And here I thought the rich and famous had it easy.”

He puts his fork down. “I’d understand if he’d try to go after me. He blames my father for letting his mother live, and the…circumstance on how I inherited the Wayne fortune was all he ever wanted. Maybe he’s after Theodore to try and bankrupt my business partners, but it seems too bothersome a process for someone as smart as him.”

“Maybe that’s what he _wants_ you to think. He _is_ smarter than you after all.”

He huffs, going back to his laptop. “A lot can change in thirty-five years. I’m not sure those little toy soldier games are an accurate measure to our strategy skill anymore.”

It’s obvious she’s trying not to make her eyes narrow as the sounds the keyboard makes fill in the nearly perfect silence. It probably doesn’t take her too long to recall why she used to be so angry at him. “Your web tech find anything useful?”

He turns the screen to her, the surveillance and dossiers from hospitals popping up on the monitor, images of a man nearly Bruce’s age, with streaks of gray in his fiery red hair and eyes so deep blue they could be indigo. She feels like she’s seen eyes like that before.

“Dr. Thomas Elliot,” Bruce announces. “MD and PhD. One of the senior doctors and head of the neurobiology department in Chicago Medical Center, top neurosurgeon in the state, valedictorian of his med school batch, number two in the nationwide USLME.”

“Found dead two days ago, a heart attack in his own estate,” she reads the headlines of a paper clipping from _The Chigaco News,_ looking up to give a playful frown to Bruce. “So are we dealing with the ghost of rich boy past?”

“When you’re as knowledgeable in the ways of the body as Dr. Elliot seems to be,” and Bruce turns the monitor back to him, “it isn’t hard to fake your own death.”

She glances at her wine, but doesn’t touch it. “I’m just here wondering if he knows about your hobby of punching criminals in the face.”

“As far as I’m concerned, he only hates Bruce Wayne. If anything, he seems to be pissed off that Theodore managed to get the Bat’s attention.”

She eats the last of the spaghetti on her plate. “So what’s the genius next move?”

“If what the data leads me to believe is true, then his plan is to bankrupt Theodore Bryant to drain me of any partners in the long run. We can break into his biotech safe and track the money down, since he’s most likely after that first.” He remembers how Theodore gave him the USB authorization key in those shadows, without even a shred of resistance; it incites a sort of familiar rage. “I’m surprised you haven’t broken into it yet.”

She shrugs. “My own gadgets and expertise can only do so much against something as cutting-edge as that. Wayne Enterprises, meanwhile…with that kind of advanced tech, it’s a whole different story.” Her eyes shine with devilry, mocking naiveté. “Which really begs the question: you have access to all those fancy tools and expensive toys. If anything, I’m surprised _you_ haven’t tried it yourself.”

He sighs as he leans on his chair, finishing the last of his wine; he knows this game too well. “I’m not as skilled stealthily breaking into safes like cat burglars. Once I burst into that place, the GCPD will come running into that bank. And as much as possible, I don’t want to make this a bigger mess than it already is, with Theodore’s head already on the line.”

Her eyebrows arch. “The big bad Bat needs my help? That’s something I haven’t heard in a long time.”

He tilts his head; it’s something he hasn’t heard in a long time as well. “You said you wanted to work together, I’m offering you that chance.”

For a moment, her eyes show a fleck of genuine emotion, of true satisfaction. “How could I say no to you?”

He wants to ignore the crafty tone in her voice. “So it’s settled. I’ll be looking for you in the area around Gotham City Bank tomorrow night. I have your number, I’ll give you a call.”

She shakes her head and a small laugh leaves her, shaking her head as she stands up. It does sound funny when he says he’ll call her; it proves how distant he’s always been. “Well, thanks for the dinner, Bats; just like old times. But I gotta get home before ten. Cats can be pretty noisy when they’re hungry.”

“Right,” he murmurs, and he gets up from his chair to walk her to the door.

They’re silent down the corridor, and he helps her put on her long coat, watching as her nimble body slides itself into the sleeves. He’s thinking about how familiar the feel of his hands on her shoulders is, how he would have pressed his chest against her back and slide his hands down her shoulders, down her arms, trailing a line of kisses on her neck as she would lean in and—

“I meant to ask,” she interrupts his thoughts, and gladly so. “The dinner pasta…did you get that takeout from Schiavone’s?”

“No,” he replies straightforwardly. “I had to make do with some ingredients Alfred bought in the convenience store downtown. He’s busy tonight.” Busy downstairs, further reinforcing the grappling hook that had snapped from the car during that one night chase.

She blinks. “Oh.”

“Why?”

She shrugs. “It was wonderful, that’s all. Didn’t know rich boys cooked that well.”

He didn’t know that he still _could_ cook. “Thanks.”

She walks to the door, her boots making cold clicks against the tiles. “Anyway, goodnight.”

He’s thinking about his work, and how much of it there is to do. “Goodnight.”

He watches her as she opens the door, and she’s halfway outside before his tongue betrays him.

“Wait.”

She turns around once she hears him, staring him right in the face. “Yes, Bruce?”

The way she says his name, the way it falls off her lips so easily. Too many times has he heard it as a tease and mocking taunt at a publicity gala, as a moan like a prayer with his head between her thighs, as he would leap off a building and she would dive in after him, like the creatures of the night they were, they are.

It catches him off-guard. It shouldn’t.

Two words press against the roof of his mouth.

_Don’t go._

“Stay safe,” he says instead, and he immediately regrets it.

She smiles; she probably knows he was holding something back, and was only disappointed he didn’t let it out. “You too.”

And she walks out, closing the door carefully behind her. They both know they can’t keep that promise.

* * *

He crouched on the edge of the rooftop, watching as down below the GCPD encased Pamela Isley inside a biotic capsule. They were to imprison her somewhere a special cell in Blackgate, surely far away from any type of flora she could use for her escape, trapped away in some sort of glass cell. The full moon overhead did little to reveal him in the shadows, the sirens of the police cars below bringing the streets to life in an almost sorrowful way, with their flashing lights and loud howling. The abandoned apartment building they had fished Isley from was swamped with vines and other shrubbery bursting through the windows, now still and soundless, even withering away slowly as their caretaker was sealed up. There were only a few officers standing outside it, debating if they should burn it down, since there’s no way in hell that they’ll be getting inside. In the end, they didn’t.

Once they closed Isley in and drove off towards Blackgate, he stood erect without the wailing of the sirens to beckon to him, the silence of the night billowing his cape around his towering form.

“Usually, it’s _you_ seeking me out,” a sly voice said from the shadows. “And not the other way around.”

He turned his head to see a feline-like figure emerge out of the shadows, a slender grace dressed in a black jumpsuit, clawed fingers putting her infrared goggles on top of her cat-shaped hood to reveal enchanting green eyes. A part of her sleeve was torn from being caught in one of Ivy’s thorny vines, luckily with only a few visible marks left on the exposed olive skin of her arm. Just seeing it still aroused some sort of ire in him; it was no wonder he was so pissed off that Ivy managed to get to her that he was ready to ram the former botanist through a window.

“You’re still here,” he said rather stupidly, his speech already corrupted by the voice modulator that he will eventually learn to grow used to.

“So are you,” she replied with a smirk.

She somersaulted over his form, landing perfectly at the tip of the cornice in front of him as she stood with her hands on her hips and her heeled boots together, head tilted to achieve an almost playful stance. The closeness of her body was sudden, and it almost made him step back. Almost.

“I thought you left,” he stated matter-of-factly. “You’re wounded.”

Both of their eyes moved towards the cuts on her arm, to which she only shrugged. “They’ll heal.” She tried to hide them as best she could, before she gave up and put her intentions right out in the open. “Look, I stayed because I wanted to talk to you.”

His eyes didn’t narrow, even though they should have. Throughout the entire five years that she had known him, and he her, in their strange flirtatious game and never-ending pursuit of cat and mouse, she never dropped that kind of heavy line before. It filled the air with a strange and yet welcome kind of gravity, something they both felt their whole relationship (or whatever it was) was leading up to.

Their on-and-off game as Bruce and Selina excited the hungry media rather well, but this chase in the dark, where their true colors showed themselves, it made his heart pump with a kind of excitement that his billionaire playboy life could never offer him. Perhaps part of the allure was that he knew her both as Selina Kyle and the Cat, but she only knew him as the Bat. Sometimes he wondered if she ever felt torn between Bruce Wayne and the Dark Knight, since (to his knowledge) she had only ever known them as two separate people. Maybe it will become clear tonight.

“Listen—” and she stopped herself, looking like she wanted to start over, but she went on anyway, “you got me out of a huge mess back there with Ivy. I could've been killed. So thank you, for saving my life…you know, _again.”_

He was about to open his mouth to respond when she caught him off-guard with a chuckle that escaped her, and so he allowed her to continue. “How many times have I ever said that to you? ‘Thanks for saving my life, Bats.’” She scoffs, shaking her head as she looked at her feet. “It's a wonder how you haven’t drowned it out yet. Maybe you have, I’ll never know.”

He never did drown it out; the thought never even crossed his mind.

Her lashes curled, looking up to lock eyes with him; her expression softened. “In all the years I’ve known you, I don’t think I ever got the chance to really say a proper thank you.”

There was something in her eyes that he hadn’t seen in such a long time. It scared him.

“Don’t do this,” he said, both to himself and to her, as he was reminded of how close they were to each other.

She stepped forward, nearly closing the gap. Their lips were inches apart, her breath spreading across the skin exposed by the cowl.

“We’ve done this dance for a long time,” she sighed.

 _They have,_ he admitted to himself. _Too long._

Her hands cupped his face as her eyes fluttered shut, and he didn’t move as the tender texture of her lips brushed against his, like a murmur, and her voice was just as soft as that. “Aren’t you at all curious?”

He could feel her head tilting towards him as she sealed that last gap between them. He knew the feeling of a kiss well enough, but there was something different about this one; his heart wasn’t used to beating this fast or loud, his breathing hadn’t been this rapid before.

Being exposed like this wasn’t something he had known. It made him afraid.

His hands grabbed the sides of her arms, ready to push her away. But suddenly, through the material of his gloves, he could feel her warmth, the heat radiating off the body pressed to his. He could feel her hands sliding down his face and across his neck, pressing his face closer, the soft feel of her lips against his as she pushed upward, trying to meet him midway through his tall height, the breeze of her balmy breath against the skin of his face.

And he was unprepared.

He closed his eyes and he allowed himself to fall.

One hand snaked down the curve of her back and rested at her waist, another went up to cradle her nape, moving her towards him, hungrily. He savored every touch, every feeling, every breath they made when they parted and returned.

He needed this. He needed her.

He had kissed Selina Kyle before, but never in the darkest shadows of the night like this, never as a fearsome Caped Crusader who struck terror into the hearts of criminals. It had never felt this different, never felt this incredible. For years, they had danced around this sensation, knowing that it would happen and yet avoiding every single presented opportunity, delaying the moment when it would burst. And perhaps waiting such a long time for it made it so much more meaningful. She had perhaps been the first to ever make him feel so helpless in another person’s arms.

He felt vulnerable. And for a moment, he wanted to be.

When they parted, his lungs had been emptied and he was already gasping for air. She was doing her best to hide just how much breath he had stolen from her, with her eyes slowly opening to lock with his. He searched them, and he found everything he had been looking for.

“Easy there, handsome,” she mumbled, running her hands down his jawline and sliding them down his chest, her eyes never leaving him. “Mmm…who knew the Bat of Gotham was such a good kisser?”

He couldn’t reply. His mind was still swimming in that bliss.

Slowly she pushed him away, widening the gap between them again as the smile on her face never left. With careful footing, she turned her back to him on the tip of the rooftop.

“Wait,” he said suddenly, surprising even himself as he grabbed her good arm. “Don’t go.”

Though the high was fading, the mischief in her eyes slowly pulled him back in again. “Just one kiss can bring the fearsome Bat to his knees? That’s quite the weakness you have there.”

He slowly let go of her, watching as she put her goggles back over her eyes.

“But just remember,” and she turned her head back to look at him, “if you ever need me, I owe you one.”

And before he could react, she leapt of the cornice into the night below, to be swallowed by the shadows. He was once again alone in the light of the pale full moon. His consciousness returned to him, and once again he became aware of the seething gloom that surrounded the city. But he still couldn’t push it from his mind.

_I kissed her._

* * *

In the artificial light of the head doctor’s office in the seemingly abandoned hospital, he stitches the last of the scalpel cuts he made on his cheeks and jawline as he takes a new set of bandages and wraps them around his face with careful precision. Just at that moment, a knock resounds on the door, and he ties the last of the loose ends by the edge of his jawline.

“Come in,” he croaks, and the door opens to reveal a large man with a repeater strapped around his torso.

“We found something, Doctor,” the armed man says.

“About the Bat?” the doctor asks, but the armed man shakes his head.

“No, something else,” he replies. “I think you better come see this.”

The armed man guides him out of the office to the scene. It’s something that would have normally angered him, if it had still been the hospital he used to work in. Painted across the large white wall at the entrance lobby of the abandoned ICU is a series of letters in a strange language that confused most of the mercenaries already gathered there. The doctor moves past most of them until he’s standing in front, squinting at the strange code that he begins to translate in his mind.

FKHFN WKH FRPSXWHU

“Caesar cipher,” he muses aloud, matching the letters in his mind. “Three shifts.”

“What does it say?” the broad-shouldered mercenary from earlier asks.

“Check the computer,” the doctor replies.

The mercenary squints. “But I thought you were smart enough to understand th—”

“That’s what it _says,”_ the doctor interjects, his voice hissing the syllables as he turns back to his study. “It’s telling me to check my computer.”

The mercenaries don’t follow him back into his office as it slams shut. The doctor turns to his laptop on his study desk and opens it to turn it on. However, he’s not greeted by his decrypted lock screen, but instead an empty blank space with a large green question mark right in the center, with blinking green text typing itself right in front of him.

Hello, Doctor Elliot.  
It seems you got my memo.

Thomas squints at the screen and types his reply back.

Who are you?

A man whose enemy is the same as yours.

Thomas doesn’t want to ask how he was able to hack into his laptop and communicate with him in this way, but he reminds himself that he’s back in Gotham. It’s almost bound to happen within forty-two hours.

Do you make it a habit to know a stranger’s common enemies?

Only when that enemy is an interesting one.

Who do you think it is then?

I would answer you straightforwardly, but I would much prefer a little game.  
Riddle me this.

Thomas eases into his arm chair, his eyes narrowing in focus as the cursor begins to spell out an enigma.

I am the darkness who stalks in the night.  
Criminals cower whenever I fight.  
They have learned to fear the power of might.  
My best weapon is the presence of fright.  
I serve no king, and yet I am a knight.  
Who am I?

The description matches the man perfectly. Thomas solves his riddle, typing his answer one slow letter at a time.

The Batman.

Correct.

If he can put his hand on his chin, Thomas would. The anaesthesia still numbed his skin.

 _He’s_ your common enemy?

He’s made a lot enemies in this city.  
Are you really surprised?

Thomas' brows furrow. This stranger isn’t making a shred of sense.

How well do you know me?

Well enough.

Then you should know he’s not the man I’m after.

I know.  
He is merely an obstacle to your greater plan to retribution.

If you know so much about my agenda, then who am I after?

Gotham, his broken home, he must defend.  
A man whose wealth has no visible end.  
His reach extends far beyond for a ‘friend’.  
His false image is that of a godsend.  
But it is simply a game of pretend.

Thomas sighs exasperatedly.

Bruce Wayne.  
Can’t you say it like a normal human being?

I believe riddles are much more fun to dissect. 

You’re dragging on something.  
What do you want?

I have knowledge that will change the very way you view this city.  
Now, listen carefully to this story.

Thomas readies his hands on the keyboard.

There was once a prince who ruled a kingdom. Though he believed it to be prosperous, it was scattered with various crimes, dastardly cutthroats and thieves. People suffered under his rule. He did everything to implement laws that would lessen crime, but to no avail. All his endeavors were useless.  
But one night, a strange supernatural being began to catch criminals, punish them, and tie them up for soldiers to fetch every morning. The process kept repeating itself until criminals began to live in fear of this strange vigilante wraith. When asked by the citizens who this strange creature was, the prince denied ever knowing such a being, only glad that this phantom was taking care of criminals.  
Soon, the strange ghost began to accumulate enemies. One of them, a cunning knave, was smarter than the rest, and avoided confrontation long enough to allow the ghost to think that he was dead. But in fact, this knave followed the ghost home…to the prince’s own castle. And what a surprise that the knave faced when he discovered that the ghost was only a costume, and wearing it was the prince himself!

Thomas frowns and pauses to take it in.

I don’t understand what this has to do with me.

It has _everything_ to do with you, Doctor.  
You only need to stop and think about it.

Thomas stops. A prince, obviously Bruce Wayne, ruling over a broken kingdom full of villainy, obviously Gotham City. Then the wraith catching criminals, obviously the Bat. Then the knave, who could most likely be this stranger with a penchant for riddles…or perhaps the Joker. It doesn’t change the fact that they’re both enemies to the Dark Knight.

_So the prince is…the wraith._

_Bruce Wayne is…_

Thomas' eyes widen.

No.

You are denying a truth I have spent decades uncovering.

Then those decades are wasted.  
There is no possible way that he could be the Bat.

You are being delusional.  
Think about it: his hedonistic image is a tool used to throw of suspicion that he may be the Bat.  
His company earns billions of dollars annually, enough to supply a technologically advanced armada: his fancy arsenal and gear.  
It falls into place in all the right places.

He doesn’t want to believe it.

You’re a terrible liar and tell terrible riddles.  
This has been a complete waste of my time.

Think of it as that.  
But in the end, I am right; I know I am.  
_You_ know I am.  
Have a good day, Doctor Elliot.

Thomas clenches his teeth and gets up violently, raking his desk and yelling as he cleared it of the laptop and multiple papers and pens that were there. The mercenaries outside hear the angry screams, but don't dare go inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The text on the left is that of Hush's. The text on the right is that of Gotham's favorite riddle-obsessed criminal, who also tipped that Bruce = Batman to Hush in the comics.


	7. For the Hardest Victory is Over the Self

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rooftop reprise. A revelation of identity. A confrontation of a dangerous opponent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, watch the tenses for some _Hush #8_ dialogue coming your way.
> 
> I imagine Selina’s newest outfit (the one in the not-flashbacks) as the one from Telltale’s Batman: not too body-hugging, but still svelte enough to recognize her as quite the figure from afar, complete with high-heeled platform boots, cat-shaped aviator helmet, and some pretty rad design overall. 
> 
> Just know that action scenes aren’t my forte. I still feel like that disclaimer isn’t going to save the writing here.

The Gotham City Bank doesn’t look as different when she left; the display lights in the darkness of the night illuminate the building in all its false grandeur, its neoclassical pillars and geometric shape obviously prioritizing aesthetics more than practicality. Sure, it’s a pretty building, but it has a dozen skylights made of incredibly thin glass that any robber can easily cut without any problem.

And the GCPD keeps wondering why their banks keep getting robbed.

She crouches on a balustrade on some residential rooftop and scans the building with her infrared goggles, and the veins of the whole building become clear. There signatures of detection lasers and the heat-sensitive sensors of Bryant’s high-tech safe are red in contrast to the blues of the cold city around her.

She smirks. It’s never been this tempting before.

“You know,” she says into the darkness as she stands up, placing her goggles up on her aviator helmet, “this isn’t my typical idea of date night.”

The darkness moves towards her, towering behind her back, the microphone distorting his voice deeper, metallic. “This isn’t a date.”

She turns around to look at him face to face, staring straight into his brown eyes as she smirks and shrugs. “I don’t know, Bats…a late night, plenty of time for conversation, an agenda for two…the only thing missing is a plate of spaghetti by candlelight and we can call it an evening.”

He crosses his broad arms and stares at her. Despite seeing him multiple times without the cowl, she never got used to how massive and daunting he was in the suit. He seems much bigger, larger, intimidating. It doesn’t frighten her; it only makes her more allured by him.

“Fine,” she relents, the smirk still present on her face. “Did you bring what I asked for?”

From his belt, he takes out a device with a round suction surface on one end attached to a mechanism with a meter, several small dials, and a keypad. The other end extends to a long wire with a small crowbar-shaped blade. A safecracker, manufactured by Wayne Enterprises: a true marvel of burglary.

Her eyes perk up as she reaches an arm out to take it. However, he’s much faster and he pulls it from her reach by his head, his eyes locking intently with hers. She deadpans.

“This comes back to me,” he growls. _“Intact.”_

She tilts her head. “You still don’t trust me?”

He doesn’t say anything, but eventually they both know that they don’t want to admit it’s true. He lowers his hand, and, with her deft fingers, she slowly reaches out, as if asking permission, and when the silence was already stretching too long, she takes it from him carefully, strapping it to another hook on her belt.

“So…” she breathes, stretching her arms as she gets up on the balustrade. “How are we getting in?”

“I thought that was for _you_ to decide,” he says, almost like some disappointed teacher who was scolding a child because she forgot to do her homework.

“I learn to improvise, Bats,” she replies as he gets up on the balustrade next to her.

They watch Gotham City Bank in the not-so far distance as the winds billow around the both of them, the stray locks of her hair uncaught by her helmet swaying against the smooth skin of her forehead, his cape billowing in the breeze.

They’re silent for a while. It’s comfortable.

“I like the new suit,” he says suddenly, and she turns to face him.

“Thanks,” she grins. “It’s leather.”

“Practical.”

“Stuffy, but efficient.”

“Still take some getting used to?”

She unfurls her whip from her side. “It’s been a while.”

He crouches on one knee, readying his grappling gun. “Ready when you are.”

And they jump.

* * *

He landed on top of an apartment building in the East End, his boots soundless against the concrete floor as her form sat on the balustrade, illuminated by the midnight lights of the city. She knew that he was there, he could sense it in the way her posture and expression shifted.

“What are you here for?” she turned to him as he approached. “I haven’t stolen anything…yet.”

“It isn’t that,” he says; the microphone of the voice modulator had never sounded this wrong before.

She got up slowly from her sitting position and looked him in the eye, her infrared goggles sitting on top of her head as she crossed her arms. “Then what’s this about? The favor I owe you?”

She was close enough for him to catch the smell of her suit against her fragrant skin. It was enough to bring him back, to remember her lips against his, the way her hands moved to guide him closer to her body, the feel of her.

_I kissed her._

“No,” he said, trying to place himself in reality again. “I’ve been talking…to some people, encouraging me to speak to you.”

She grinned, tilting her head to the side. “So I have a fan?”

“Robin,” he paused, and he’s briefly reminded about that talk they had in the car; how Dick had put out argument after argument on why it was a good idea. “He’s been trying to convince me.”

She crossed her arms. “About what?”

“To seek you out.”

He left out the part where Dick said that she was perhaps the only woman in his life that made him feel this way, and that it was reason enough to let her in; that every relationship he had before failed because he refused to trust the woman with the greatest secret of his life. It really was none of Dick’s business, but for once in his run as the Bat, a sixteen year old managed to beat him in an argument.

His hands were limp at his sides as she faced him curiously. He channelled every single word and spoke them slowly, intently, full of as much emotion as he could pour into them, given his fearsome visage and name. She didn’t seem to mind the slightest.

“I know who you are,” he began. “Both as the Cat and Selina Kyle. You live a dual life, and so do I. And I’ve learned that I want to be part of those two lives, I want to learn to let people in again. My better judgment’s lead me to believe that you’ll be the new reason why.”

He felt like she knew about where the conversation was headed, and she gave off a sad sigh, shaking her head as she went back up to his eyes. “You know, for all your brooding, you tend to keep a lot of people close to you. Robin, Batgirl, Gordon. I don’t know, maybe I’ll be that last person who’ll make sure you ever let anybody in again.”

There was that sense of hopelessness in her words; the denial whenever he called her a good person and she saw herself as nothing but a thief, the isolation she felt whenever she blamed herself for any misfortune. He had heard it for too long. He needed her to feel like she was worth something, to him, to anyone. Nobody deserved to feel that way, especially her.

“You won’t,” he said finally.

Taking the edge of the cowl that lined his cheek, he pulled it off slow enough so that he could feel the night air brush past the skin of his neck, then his jaw, and finally his forehead, until the breeze was flying past the locks of his dark hair and the weight of the cowl was in the fingers of his hand, which he dropped onto the concrete floor without a sound. 

Her eyes widened as she took a step forward, her expression only displaying shock as the gravity settled in.

“Bruce,” she seemed to whisper.

They were silent for a while, unmoving on the rooftop. Then he watched as she bowed her head and sighed, her expression hidden by his height. He didn’t want to admit that it unnerved him slightly, since he didn’t know what to expect from her reaction.

His breath hitched in his throat. “I—”

And suddenly a force nearly knocked him off his feet, a body colliding with his, effectively cutting him off. Only when a few seconds passed did he feel the warmth of her body pressed against his chest, as her declawed fingers snaked up his nape and back, embracing him close as she could. He began to slowly ground himself on earth again, wrapping his arms around her waist and shoulders, holding her to him as their hug began to ease out of the shock.

She chuckled as she pulled back a little, far enough that he could look into her eyes, close enough that he could feel the heat of her lips.

“What’s so funny?” he murmured, the threatening grumble of his voice modulator gone.

“Nothing,” she shook her head as her smile only grew. “I’m just glad that I don’t have to choose between my on-and-off billionaire boyfriend and the Bat. It was becoming a bit of a dilemma.”

He surprised himself by laughing as she pressed his lips to his, with the new feeling of her deft fingers sliding through his hair as the weight of the suit hung on his tired shoulders. 

* * *

Crouching on the rooftop of Gotham City Bank, he watches as she unsheathes her claws on one hand, carefully cutting a perfect circle in the glass of the skylight. Once she removes the cut out, she ties the end of her whip on a screw next to her, and after giving a hard tug, she jumps inside and uses the whip as a rope, slowly rappelling her way down until her heeled boots land soundlessly on the bank floor.

On the rooftop, he backtracks a little, sprints, then jumps through the hole, his cape expanding and stiffening to allow his fall to delay itself as he lands solidly next to her.

“Show off,” she teases, rolling her eyes.

He resists the urge to smirk.

“Okay, so let’s see…” and she puts her goggles over her eyes, scanning the long hallway line with safes as she turned the corner to find that of Bryant’s. “Here we go.”

And the large safe came into view, much more massive than any of the others next to it. A great thing of steel, with all the bells and whistles in its skeleton wired to the loudest alarm bells in the whole building. She’s been to the Louvre and stolen a Rembrandt or two in her glory days; this shouldn’t be hard.

She stretches her arms and neck in front of it, shaking her wrists loose as she procures the safecracker and attaches it to the façade of the safe. It latches onto the metal surface almost smoothly as she unfastens a panel from the face with her claws, putting the wire inside. Then her head and hands poke into the inner mechanisms, only occasionally looking up to see if the device lit up.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” he comments from behind her.

“That’s why you tagged me along, isn’t it?” she says nearly casually as she twists a small knob inside twice to the left, once to the right, the soft sounds of the cogs spinning inside echoing throughout the empty building.

“See, here’s the thing about these kinds of safes, Bats—” she presses a button, and one light on the safecracker lights up, “the people who make these things think that they’re making it more secure, but in fact—” spin two knobs, another light on the safecracker, “they’re only giving me—” a cog stops spinning and a switch unlocks.

The third light makes a little string on the safecracker, and a satisfying click is heard from behind the safe. “More time for fun.”

He stands there, watching as she looks back at him with a smirk on her face. There’s a reason why the GCPD had her on the watchlist for a while, and once again he’s reminded why she was such a troublesome villain in the past, and a useful ally in the present.

“I turned off the gate’s heat-sensors,” she says as she makes her way to the digit keypad at the side. “Ugh, this thing has more walls than a medieval castle.”

He looks at the display screen as she reads the heat signatures on the keypad to identify the code. “You need—”

“Fingerprints,” and she gestures at her gloves, which no doubt already duplicated Bryant’s. “I wasn’t just hanging out with Bryant for a nice roof over my head.”

One step ahead, as always. She punches in the eight digit code, and they watch as the last latch on the safe unlocks, groaning as it begins to open.

Suddenly, the shot of a pistol resonates throughout the empty bank, and a burst of sparks erupts near the both of them, effectively destroying the safebreaker with one accurate hit.

A flurry of pistol shots begin to try and shoot at the both of them, but before she could even react, the Bat sprints into action. In one fluid movement, he uses his cape to shield them from the shots as he throws a Batarang towards the direction of the gunfire, and a noisy clang is heard. The shots stop.

Once the air is still again, they both get a good look at the figures on the upper floor of the bank’s vaults. Armed men dressed in black to further disguise them in the shadows all surround a large brown trench coat and Kevlar armor, bandages wrapped around a hidden face as red gloves hold a smoking gun towards them in mid-air.

“‘A friend is a single soul dwelling in two bodies,’” the bandages quote, looking down at the Bat and the Cat as he reloads his pistol. “But Aristotle says the same thing about love.”

“Thomas,” the Bat growls.

Thomas put his finger to his lips. “Hush, now. We don’t want to be spilling any names. Besides, it would be quite the shock if I was to drop yours right here, right now, in front of all my men.”

Her eyes widen.

From her side, the Bat seems to stiffen, his posture becomes more rigid as he clenches his fists. “You’re lying.”

“You’ve made plenty of enemies in this city,” Thomas muses. “Some of them are kind enough to share some rather interesting information.”

There’s a darkness behind his eyes now, an intent to harm. _“Who?”_

Thomas shrugs. “I wouldn’t know either. It was an anonymous fellow who hacked into my computer, called you our common enemy. But that doesn’t narrow it down much, now does it?”

There’s an ire brewing underneath the surface, ready to break through. The Bat takes a step forward, but she puts a hand on his chest and they lock eyes. She stares him down, shaking her head with as little movement as she could, and the intense ire begins to melt away slowly. But the drive to fight is still there, his figure summoning every ounce of power from within him, as he opens and closes his gloved hands. There’s electricity in the air between him and Thomas, tension stretched into a thin line ready to snap.

“I’m here for the money,” Thomas continues, “but it seems you already know that. Still, thank you for bringing a friend along to break it open and save us time.”

She bares her teeth in a snarl.

“You haven’t gotten past us yet,” he readies his stance, like a tiger before pouncing.

She unfurls her whip with a loud crack that bounces off the walls of building as she smirks.

_He said ‘us.’_

“Guess I’m going to have to try,” Thomas says, raising his free hand, ready to command.

“I’ll protect the money,” she says underneath her breath to the Bat, aware he could hear. “Go get Thomas.”

He nods. Thomas brings his hand down, and the bank is lit with open fire.

She easily rolls out of the path of the bullets and unleashes her whip onto the men with accuracy, easily bringing them down to hit their heads from that two-story drop onto the marble flooring. Some men already began to run down the staircase to shoot at her from the sides, but she easily moves out of the way of the bullets and jumps into the air, scratching them with the sharp claws on her fingernails and taking them out with good strong hits to their weak points, disabling them if she could, disarming them with her whip.

Since she was drawing away all of Thomas’ two dozen men, that left the Bat to spring up and strike Thomas from the air, using the gliding capabilities of his cape to slow down and control his descent. Thomas brings out another M1911 from his coat, but he’s too late to pull the triggers and the Bat descends on him and delivers a quick punch to his face. With a grunt, Thomas skids backwards, but he blocks another kick coming towards him and tries to strike. Nearly equal in height and mass, both of them exchange hits, blocks, and punches, in an effort to try and overtake the other.

The Bat recognizes the deadlock early on and pushes himself back using the force of Thomas’ punch, shifting his footing and unsheathing three Batarangs in one swift turn. He throws them all at Thomas, but the doctor reacts quickly and takes out his guns, shooting them all through and stopping them with immense accuracy. The Bat is only grateful he was able to dodge the bullets in time.

“Cat!” he screams, and he sees the crack of a whip scattering enemies before a familiar figure turns her attention to him. “The safe!”

She turns around briefly to see about three goons running in the direction of Bryant’s open safe. Throwing another Batarang to distract Thomas, he cups his hands below his waist and tightens the grip, bending his knees.

“Jump!” he commands.

She sprints, stepping onto his gloved hands as he boosts her up into the air. She somersaults through the air, back flipping above all of the mercenaries and soldiers, before landing soundlessly directly in front of the loot, smirking at the surprised men in front of her. With a loud crack of her whip, she floors two of the guards and knocks the other one out with a well-placed punch.

She smirks at him. He nods back at her.

But suddenly, Thomas is next to him, grabbing his arm as he presses the muzzle of his gun to his shoulder. A large bang reverberates through the bank, and he grunts as the pain shoots up his limb.

“Bat!” she yells, and, taking out the last of the goons charging at her, she makes her way there as fast as she can.

Grabbing a Batarang with his free hand, the Bat makes a slice across the air, drawing blood straight from Thomas’ face. With a yell, the bandages begin to stain red as Thomas staggers back, trying to keep them in place with his free hand as another shoots blindly in front of him. The Cat draws back in front of him, lashing her whip out at Thomas so that with a yelp, he would let go of his gun.

“Back off!” she yelled as the surgeon began to slowly walk away, still facing them.

“Wait…” from her back, the Bat gets up, holding his arm as the other hand still remains clenched into a fist, eyes locked on Thomas. “You know nothing.”

Thomas’ hand doesn’t leave his bleeding face. “About what?”

“You don’t know me,” the Bat sneers. “You don’t know who I am.”

For a moment, Thomas’ eyes soften. Then he looks around at all of the unconscious bodies of his soldiers, then right back to both the Bat and the Cat, expression steely, unfeeling, vengeful.

“You underestimate me,” he announces slowly, “Bruce Wayne.”

The Bat clenches his jaw, narrows his eyes. The Cat’s hands are trembling.

“How?” the Bat roars, advancing towards him. “Tell me _how!”_

“This will not be our final confrontation,” Thomas says, retreating back into the hallway. “But for now, we part with my favorite maxim from the fallen Aristotle: beware the man who can strike from a distance!”

The Bat runs after him, the Cat following after. But Thomas jumps backward, crashing the window behind him as he descends into the Gotham skyline, falling into the darkness. The Bat looks out through the broken glass, but his enemy is nowhere to be seen, almost as if he had vanished without a trace, or never really jumped out.

“Gone,” he answers the Cat’s silent question as she waits behind him, coiling her whip back into a circle to fasten at her waist. “How’s the safe?”

“It auto-locked during the fight,” she sighs disappointedly. “And now with that safecracker broken, it’s useless now.”

He turns around to look back at the two dozen goons beaten up over the floor, but suddenly the pain shoots up his shoulder and he grunts, faltering a bit. She catches his huge torso and hoists his weakened side over her body, slinging his arm around her. He removes his hand from the wound, and the fingers of his gauntlets are wet with blood.

“Shit,” he curses, then grunts as she moves him slowly.

“Thought that suit of yours was bulletproof,” she teases as she helps him stand upright.

“Not at point blank range,” he huffs, then taps into his comm. “Alfred?”

“Yes, Sir?” he responds as the Cat helps him to walk.

“Prep the med bay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, I'm sorry for the delayed update. Holiday stuff and all that. Anyway, hope you had a great holidays, and here's to the incoming new year!


	8. One Brief Time of Happiness Does Not Make a Person Entirely Happy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An early morning visitation. An exposure of weakness. An intercession of confessions. A tragic denial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, watch the tenses. 
> 
> The chapters will begin to update later and later as I figure out what I’m doing with these scenes. We’re getting closer and closer to the actual meat of the story, and where you’ll really see the _Heart of Hush_ shine through. The angst will be present from here on out. 
> 
> A little bit of not-that graphic not-really explicit sexual content. You have been warned.

He lies on his bed as Alfred leaves the room carrying a tray full of metal scraps of bullets, bloodied steel tools, and bottles of water and alcohol. Outside, he nearly bumps into Selina, who’s only making her way in, as he nods and allows her to greet the bedridden figure. By the doorway, she sighs and closes it behind her, as the dim light of his bedside table illuminates her figure slowly as she walks towards him, finally taking a seat on the chair next to his bed.

“You look like shit,” she comments, and he groans as he fixes how his shoulders rest on his pillow.

“There have been worse days,” he says, obviously trying to pass if off as no big deal.

“Like what? Falling off a skyscraper and crashing through the skylight of the Gotham City Bank?”

He lets out a weak laugh; the memory isn’t that fresh, but the pain is. “Try a broken back courtesy of Bane.”

“Yeowch,” she grimaces, but a giggle escapes her afterward as she leans into the chair.

Even with his back on a pillow and his shoulder wrapped with multiple bandages, he tilts his head a little to look at her. The darkness of the three o’clock morning outside and the little help his lamp gives him only allows him to see a faint outline of her body. While she’s still wearing her cat suit, she’s discarded her small one-strapped knapsack and whip, together with her belt of gadgets and lock picks and what else. Without her headgear and goggles, her short hair barely goes past her jawline, brushing downwards at uneven angles and framing her green eyes in a way more charming than he’d admit.

Though from the waist down, he hadn’t been stripped of his suit, his chest and arms are bare, the cold night atmosphere gripping his skin. She turns to lock eyes with him, and her gentle gloved hand slowly places itself on his bandaged shoulder. It doesn’t hurt when she smiles.

“Sorry about back there,” she says, her smile fading. “I was too far away when he shot you.”

“Don’t,” he replies. “You did the best you could.”

She shakes her head as a retort. “The best won’t be enough next time. You could’ve—”

“But I didn’t,” he interjects; he has this conversation too much with Alfred, he doesn’t need her piling alongside it.

She sighs in defeat and retrieves her hand, placing both gently in her lap. They both sit in the silence; it aches, especially with the fact that their new enemy now has knowledge they would rather keep hidden. Her eyes run up his chest and stay on his face; he can’t look back at her without feeling like he failed tonight.

“Look, it’s late,” she prepares to get up. “I really should be going.”

He watches wordlessly as she stands and walks towards the door. But she stops suddenly, and he can practically hear her face drop.

“Ah, shit,” she curses.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“My motorbike. I left it out on the alleyway corner of the bank. Guess I’m running home tonight.”

“You don’t have to,” he says, wondering why he can’t stop his tongue. “You can have the guest bedroom until morning. Just tell Alfred.”

She turns, and the glimmer in her green eyes is only but touched by kindness. “Thanks, I’ll talk to him later. Don’t strain yourself too hard, alright?”

He can’t help but smirk. “Now you’re starting to sound like him.”

She chuckles. “About time another mouth needed to yap on about your safety.” And she opens the door. “Goodnight, Bat.”

He closes his eyes. “Goodnight, Cat.”

And the door shuts soundlessly.

About an hour later, Alfred will come in to serve him early breakfast soup and coffee which he won’t end up drinking, telling him that Selina had fallen asleep on his couch.

* * *

A knock sounds on the head doctor’s door, and a mercenary comes in with a box of papers. The lights are on, flickering like sparks on a fireplace, and he sees the Doctor standing next to a large corkboard from across his ruined desk, staring at it like he’s missing a few pieces of a puzzle. Across the board, multiple pictures, news clippings, and other dossiers, mug shots, criminal records, and documentaries, are all pinned in an almost haphazard way, organized by the red strings linking the pins to one another. The mercenary stands to look at them as the bandaged Doctor goes to check the box of papers that the soldier had brought in.

On one side, there are multiple cut-out articles from the entertainment section of _The Gazette_ and other old, badly-written bait editorials from tabloids, paparazzi pictures of a broad man in rich-looking clothing with his arm specifically three women: one dressed in black with large-rimmed sunglasses, one blonde-haired bright-eyed lady, and an ebony-skinned model with long-flowing hair. On the other side, there are headlines from _The Globe_ about the successes of the Bat of Gotham, how the Joker’s escape from Arkham was put to an abrupt end by a shadowy figure that the blurry images make out as a large wraith, the night shadows billowing as a cape at his back. And right in the middle, criminal records of one of the women, leather and infrared goggles and smirking in mug shots, with news detailing robberies whose lines included some sort of pathetic cat pun.

“‘Bruce Wayne with Selina Kyle…again,” the mercenary reads the tabloid headline that Thomas picks, albeit with less interest and ignoring the three exclamation marks at the end of the title.

Thomas pins it on the wall with the other articles with Bruce Wayne, then proceeds to connect it with a red string to one of the news clippings about the cat burglar.

“So it’s set as clear as in stone,” Thomas muses to himself, tapping a finger on his bandaged chin.

“We’re taking a hostage, then,” the mercenary says.

“‘Hostage’ wouldn’t be the word I’m looking for, but it’s the closest we have,” Thomas replies, walking father away from the board. “We’re looking for a perfect hit point.”

“Hit point?” the mercenary frowns. “I thought we were targeting the Bat, not Bruce Wayne.”

Thomas pauses for a while, as if contemplating something important, then he shakes his head. “I’ve been given evidence that the Bat utilizes technology from Wayne Enterprises. We can use this advantage to hit both Wayne and the vigilante he arms. A ‘two birds with one stone’ situation.”

The mercenary nods as he crosses his arms. “So who do think can hit Wayne the hardest?” He points to the blonde woman in the photographs. “Vicki Vale?”

Thomas shakes his head. “First loves never last, often fleeting and impulsive in a state of youthful passion. Though I’m confident the feelings were genuine then, they’ve faded beyond memory now.”

“Then Jezebel Jet?” the mercenary suggests, looking at the African beauty on the articles whose looks surpassed any other woman that Wayne had dated in his lifetime.

Thomas walks closer again to the board. “A publicity stunt, at best, a gaudy fling, at worst. It’s so obvious he was fond of her for only a brief moment, though I still remain unsure.”

“So that leaves us with the jewel thief,” the mercenary shakes his head. “Funny…never found Wayne to be the type to mingle around criminals.”

“So did I,” Thomas seems to hiss.

He tacks the last of the pins and strings connecting the whole plan to the center, where a mug shot of the cat burglar lay. It became a web of red lies and plain truths, all exposed before Thomas to reveal his next target.

* * *

Stepping out of the bath and into his bedroom, he found a figure that turned to greet him, standing by the large curtained window. She was dressed in one of his night robes, sloppily tied, loose enough that he could see she was wearing only her bra, and tight enough that she wouldn’t reveal anything other than that. Her dark hair was still long then, but not as long as when they met, brushing her shoulders and collarbones. That sly smile and those green eyes, though, they were still as mesmerizing.

He proceeded to dry his still dripping hair. “I see you’ve helped yourself to my wardrobe.”

She looked down at his robe. “It smells nice.”

He let a tired breath go. The night light from outside going through the panes of Wayne Manor’s windows outlined the curves and edges of her body. It suited her.

The bruises from the fight earlier that evening were already starting to show on his arms and stomach. He tried to bite down a pained hiss as he hung his towel on a rack and sat on his four-poster bed, watching her as she prowled toward him. She slowly climbed on top and straddled his sitting form, putting her thighs on either side of his legs. Her arms began to snake up his bare chest and around his neck, along his jaw and through his hair, and he realized suddenly that she wasn’t wearing any pants either, the soft fabric of her underwear against his expensive pair of slacks. He rested his hands at her waist, her breath hitching at his touch. There was a scent that clung to her, the masculine fragrance of his cologne still lingering around the robe she wore, and the flowery aroma of her shampoo. 

They were quiet like that for a while, the heat of her body already seeping into his skin. One of her hands left his scalp and began to trace three parallel scars across his chest, almost invisible there among the many others that all these ten years have left him with; she knew exactly where the others she had made were. He tried looking into her eyes, but they were still following her own fingers, her green irises almost sad, remorseful.

“Don’t,” he said, and she let out a breath, moving her hands from his chest to his neck, even though her touch still lingered.

“Still can’t say you look good with them,” she replied, and it almost made him sigh.

They were quiet again, and she leaned in close, pressing kiss to his lips that was almost chaste, despite the way their bodies were positioned against one another. He returned with the same tired eagerness, his hands never leaving her waist as she ran her fingers through his hair. The effect it had on him still stoked fires he couldn’t quench in his chest, and brought out the taste of the guilt on his tongue.

“I’m sorry,” he seemed to murmur against the heat of her mouth.

“About what?” she breathed.

“About Maggie,” he blinked slowly, looking up to lock eyes with her. “About Holly, and Black Mask, and all of that. I should’ve been there, I should’ve…”

Her eyes softened; it was evident that she wanted to hide the pain he had brought up. “Please, Bruce, it’s okay.”

He felt terrible that he pushed that topic into the light, but he needed her to know he cared. “Selina, I just…I need to you know that I’m here, I’ve always been. You didn’t have to do it alone.”

It was a heavy toll that Selina bore by herself, and it was incredible how she didn’t fall completely apart when the dust finally settled. First, Black Mask had taken her younger sister Maggie and her poor husband, tortured them in ways not even the Joker could come up with, and she had to put her best friend and confidant Holly Robinson through the terrible trauma of having killed someone just because she couldn’t defend herself against an enemy. In less than three days, Maggie had become catatonic, Holly had been shelled up, and Selina’s counselling with her friends Dr. Thompson and Slam Bradley hadn’t gotten the best of results.

It had been nearly two weeks. It hadn’t been getting easier. She had lost everything.

Well, _nearly_ everything.

“It wasn’t—” and she stopped herself, choking back the tears, “it wasn’t your burden to carry. It happened to them because of me, so I had to take it…I _had to._ You wouldn’t understand, and it’s fine.”

“I do,” he said carefully, intently. “I know what it’s like to hurt the people you love. And I could’ve been there for you when I wasn’t. When I should’ve been.”

And his mind goes back to Dick, and that argument they had the night that he quit being Robin, the night after he ran away and worried Bruce half to death. That last fight they had in the cave never stopped coming back to haunt him, no matter how much work he swamped himself with to keep him distracted. He had never meant to call his son childish or unprepared or any of those awful things, and seeing him leave like that—the only family he had ever known since he was a child—was excruciating to watch. He knew they were on better terms now, and were closer than they could've ever been, but it still dug stakes into his conscience.

She shook her head and pressed her forehead to his, trying her best not to cry. “You know, when you aren’t a brooding asshole, you can be kind of a sweetheart. Thanks, Bats. It means a lot to me.”

He leaned in closer, even though they were already close enough. “I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

The light in her eyes and the slur of her voice returned slowly, but it returned. “You can start making it up to me tonight.”

And he couldn’t help but smile as they kissed, soft at first, feathery touches, then growing towards elicited whispers and gropes. Her hands went down his chest and along his back, tracing the many scars that were already there, and the whines and murmurs and the way she muttered his name between the breaths of their heated kisses…it was unbearable. The collar of the robe pooled around her shoulders and the bare olive skin that was exposed made him hungry for more.

“You sure we can?” she asked breathlessly when they parted.

“Hm?” his brows knitted. “What do you mean?”

“You know,” she distanced herself from him, but close enough for him to be tempted by her moving lips, “you _do_ have a kid in this house.”

He scoffed. “Jason’s thirteen; he’s old enough to curse.”

She raised an eyebrow. “The last time he walked in on us, he never entered your bedroom for another month.”

“Mmmm, that’s all in the past.” He closed his eyes, trying to empty his mind. “I think I love you, Cat.”

A soft laugh escaped her and she kissed his eyelid gently, then the corner of his mouth. “I _know_ I love you, Bat.”

Her lips stayed on his own, growing in avidity. He fought back with the same heat and intensity until her laughter became moans. He growled, trailing his lips along her jaw as she moved him closer; he pressed his mouth to the tender flesh of her neck, taking in her scent, her tresses against his face, her hands in his hair. He could feel himself tighten as she began to slowly grind against him. It wasn’t as if this was the first night they fucked, but it still felt as raw and new every time.

And just before he was going to rip to shreds that annoying robe from her gorgeous body, a knock sounded on the old oak doors of his bedroom. His lips left her neck and they both turned to the door; it opened with a creak, revealing Alfred’s face poking through.

“Master Wayne,” Alfred said with the most straightforward face he could muster. “Master Jason is requesting your presence."

Bruce sighs, his arousal leaving him as Selina got off his lap. “Did he say why?”

“I assumed it was because he needed help sleeping,” Alfred replied, opening the door wider as Bruce took a dress shirt from his chair and began buttoning it. “He said he didn’t want to come here personally, because he knew Miss Kyle was here and that he might…interrupt something. I’m afraid I have as well.”

“Don’t worry, we were just starting,” Bruce huffed, quickly putting on a pair of slippers.

A chuckle left Selina. Alfred could only roll his eyes.

Bruce got up and gave Selina a quick kiss on her forehead. “I’ll be back.”

“Sure you will,” she replied as she watched Bruce leave the room.

Alfred entered the room and closed the door, and with only him and Selina, the air was quiet for a while in the most comfortable sort of way. She had never felt uneasy around Alfred, and he was perhaps the most welcoming and warm person in the whole manor. It was a feat, considering how the other two people who lived there were both crime-fighting animal-themed vigilantes who stitched up each other’s wounds instead of playing baseball in Robinson Park.

“If you may allow me, Miss Kyle,” Alfred said suddenly as Selina turned to him.

“Yes, Alfred?” Selina replied, fixing her sitting position on Bruce’s large bed.

“I’d just like to…thank you,” Alfred smiled.

As flattered as she was, Selina frowned. “You’re welcome, sure…but what for?”

Alfred looked to the door; his expression meant he was carefully crafting the words in his head, as if he'd been thinking about it for quite a while. “It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen Master Wayne truly happy, even seen him smile, or hear him laugh, for that matter. Not only with a woman, as the Dark Knight or as the billionaire, but as a man. And I believe that a large reason for that is because of you.”

She blinked; surely this came up from pent up years of experiencing plenty of people walk in and out of Bruce’s life. “Me?”

He nodded. “You’ve made him human.”

Selina stared at him as the butler continued.

“It’s been ten years ever since the beginning of the mission, and one of my worst fears was staring to manifest quite early on: that he would forget that he was still a person with emotions. That in fighting criminals, he would have to become ruthless and distant, and that those attributes would stay with him even without the cowl. But because of you, he’s truly learned to stay in touch with his own feelings. He’s learned how to love another person, both as Bruce and the Bat, and you’ve been someone who’s given him that opportunity.”

She smiled, brushing a stray lock of hair around her ear as she fixed Bruce’s robe on her shoulders. “You know, you can also thank yourself, Dick, Babs, and Jason for that.”

“Fair enough, but I must give credit where credit is due, Miss Kyle. He’s right for truly calling you a remarkable woman.”

She could feel herself blush. “Now we can both wait when he says that to my face.”

And they both laughed.

* * *

Alfred glances at the monitor of Bruce’s laptop through the corner of his eye, and between the files of Thomas Elliot and surveillance of Bryant Industries, there’s windows open of the construction being done back at the old Wayne Manor, architecture files and designs for large tables with logos and more than half a dozen chairs. It seems strange, almost: Bruce often tried to distance himself from that house after…the event with Jason, but it looks like he was beginning to move on.

But something still seems off.

“You seem troubled,” Alfred says, his tone making it seem as if he knows he’s stating the obvious.

“Beware the man who can strike from a distance…” Bruce repeats Thomas' words as he brings up the doctor's MD and PhD diplomas, tapping his hand on his chin. “It’s a threat.”

Alfred stands in front of the bed Bruce sits on, the latter's bare chest patched up with more bandages changed more than a few times within the last three hours. The dawn sun is already slowly lighting up the sky, casting thin shadows all around the room.

“That means you have to be suspicious,” Bruce says to his butler, clicking a few more of Thomas’ files from med school, enlarging them to find his face in his class photos. “Strike every moving shadow, if you have to. Never open the door for _anybody._ If you get a call from me and I’m asking for your help, don’t go to me. In the event of an ambush, there’s a safety switch—”

“Under the kitchen counter," Alfred finishes, like he's memorized it. "I know basic protocol, Master Wayne; we’ve done this many times.”

“But this is an enemy that knows us too well. I have to be careful now. No mistakes.”

There’s a pause, and it doesn’t feel right. Bruce’s zooms in on deleted CCTV footage from Archie Goodwin International Airport, revealing a man in shades and carrying only one backpack leaving a plane that came from Chicago, who approaches a woman wearing black. Tracing each and every single one of Thomas’ movements isn’t as hard as he initially thought.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Bruce stops his typing and instead stares at the video feed he looped, putting his laptop on the nightstand. “That I should probably warn Selina too.”

Alfred tries to form a response in his head, but it dies on his tongue. He only has a question left. “Then why don’t you?”

Bruce supresses a groan as he tries to moves his arm. “If I’m following Thomas’ logic correctly, he’ll be striking the people closest to me.”

“And she _is_ close to you, isn’t she?” Alfred retorts before Bruce could start another sentence.

Bruce sighs and shuts his eyes. “Before.”

They both want to believe it _was_ before.

“I can’t afford to feed him information,” Bruce continues, his voice much more fatigued. “If I give him the impression that she isn’t close to me, then he’ll ignore her and move on to bigger targets, like you. And as long as you’re in the cave, you’re untouchable.”

“You’re pushing her away on purpose,” Alfred synthesizes. “Diverting attention away from her towards me. Can’t you just tell her that?”

Bruce stops. “I…don’t know if I should still—”

“Trust her,” Alfred interrupts again, his words disappointed. “You don’t trust her.”

“It’s been _ten years,_ Alfred, what do you expect me to do?” Bruce stands up from the bed, his voice slowly growing with sternness as he locks eyes with his butler. “Run back to her and leap into her arms? I’m not the same man she fell in love with, and she isn’t the same woman I knew in the past. We’ve both changed; there’s _no chance.”_

There’s a terrifying amount of tension in the air as the two men stare at each other, waiting. Bruce’s height and build is commanding, gathering the air around him to form a formidable threat simply in the way he stands, but Alfred remains adamant and narrows his eyes.

“You say that with _so much_ conviction,” Alfred enunciates slowly, “that if you say it louder, you’d think that it’s true.”

Bruce breathes out harshly. “It _is.”_

Alfred shakes his head, and, for a split second, sees a fault in the strong walls that Bruce had built around his heart. “You’re scared of her.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re scared of what she makes you _feel_ for her.”

“I’m _not.”_

Alfred sets his hands at his side, looking Bruce straight in the eye. “She’s made you human.”

A breath, the air is so quiet the sound of the coffeemaker chimes loudly in the kitchen outside to alert that it was done brewing.

Bruce’s frustration fades, but he doesn’t move. “It’s a weakness. It can’t show.”

“It’s not a weakness,” Alfred corrects. “If anything, _not_ having it makes it a weakness. Look at what had become of you before the League came into your life.”

Bruce’s eyes wander over to the photographs of the hall at Wayne Manor. He knew exactly what he was before the League: he was a monster, a true figment of nightmares. For a while, he had thought that the Bat’s purpose had been fulfilled. But it had drained him of everything: the family he had grown, the life he thought he needed, his very essence of humanity. And the mission was still far from over.

“You’ve been with so many people over the past two decades,” Alfred continues. “Vicki Vale, Jezebel Jet, even whatever you have with Miss Prince; those are just off the top of my head, forgetting all your flings with those socialite floozies. And I still can’t think of any other woman who you had cared so much for.”

Bruce takes a deep breath and wipes his face, the anger melting from him, his resolute and stoic demeanor still standing strong. He walks away from Alfred (and the conversation) with his back to him, one hand at his waist while the other massages his wounded shoulder. Alfred can only sigh at another failed attempt to convince him, as it's not the first and definitely won't be the last time they would have this conversation.

“Alfred?” he says suddenly.

“Yes, Master Wayne?” Alfred replies.

And they lock eyes, Bruce’s gaze apologetic, despite his dead expression. “I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier. I didn’t mean it.”

Alfred sighs. “It’s fine, Sir.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The incident of Maggie, Holly, and Black Mask that Bruce was referring to in the flashback is the Relentless arc of _Catwoman (2002)_ by Ed Brubaker. It really is quite the read, and although very disturbing, it really brings out the worst and best in Selina’s resilience as a character. It’s not for the faint of heart, that much I can warn you.


	9. Whosoever is Delighted in Solitude is Either a Wild Beast or a God

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A vanishing act. A spilled confession. A hunt for the feline. A visitation of misery. A capture of malice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last flashback here, and I’ve already warned you that the angst has begun.
> 
> BatCat is a good ship, for the right reasons. It isn’t perfect, it isn’t flawless, it’s built on a lot of development, character, and long-drawn storytelling. It has a lot of bumps in the road, since both Bruce and Selina are stubborn, often on opposite sides of the spectrum, and yet still believing in one another. And like every couple, they aren’t safe from breakups.

“You’re what?” he said, his voice hoarse from not being used in nearly thirty hours.

She was standing in the Wayne Manor foyer, dressed in black like she was going to a funeral, no inch of her skin left exposed. Her long hair was coiled into a bun underneath the cloche hat, her lips a deadly red. Those green eyes tried to hide as much sadness as they could, but he could read through them. She _knew_ he could read through them.

“I’m leaving,” she repeated, her voice choked up by the tears she was trying to desperately to hold back.

He allowed those words to grab him by the throat. The cold dusk air wafted between them as he stood on the landing of his massive staircase, his robe loose on him as he reached up to scratch his wild beard.

Right; he hadn’t shaved in two months.

“How long do you have left?” he asked as he approached her, walking down, step by step, gradually.

She checked her probably stolen watch. “About an hour before departure.”

“To Paris?” he guessed; he remembered how much she wanted to see Paris.

She shrugged. “The ticket says that, but at this point, it’s no different from 'anywhere but here'.”

There was a painful pause. They both knew the reason why she was leaving, and yet none of them had the intact heart to say it. He stopped at the foot of the staircase, a meter away from her, and he didn’t dare take one more step forward. He was broken, she was tired, and they both thought that the other wasn’t aware. They were aware.

“I know this isn’t the best time to just walk out on you,” she admitted, wrapping her arms around herself. “But I can’t afford to see you like this, Bruce. Ever since Jason passed away, you’ve been destroying yourself.”

He felt his heart crumble again at the mention of the poor boy’s name. “Selina—”

“Look at you,” she locked eyes with him, and her expression said it all. “Look at what you’ve become. You’re no longer the hero that Gotham needs _or_ deserves.”

Oh, how he hated that she threw those words back at him when she knew nothing of what they truly meant. But he was in no position to judge. Gordon had begun to notice that the Bat had been acting…differently. Instead of tying up crooks or handing them over to the GCPD like he used to, Gordon and his squad would almost always find them beaten within an inch of their lives, covered in pools of their own blood. He had become more ruthless, merciless, his methods of interrogation bordering on near-murder, and the infirmary with of Gotham General Hospital was filled up before Blackgate. They say the Bat was now a different man than he once was. People were wondering if his quest for the eradication of crime now become more of a cold-blooded crusade, if the Dark Knight had finally met his match with the Joker, and maybe he had.

Ever since…the incident with Robin, he had been spacing out, his mind in every single place except where those who needed him wanted it to be. And nobody was an exception: Lucius, Barbara, Alfred, especially Selina, who probably felt the worst of it. What made it even more terrible was that did nothing to fix the rift he saw was growing between them. She tried to reach out to him in whatever way she could, but he could never meet her halfway. It was getting too arduous, even for a vigilante billionaire.

“That isn’t the only reason,” he said, willingly shoving the truth into his mouth further; if this would ever be the last time, he had to know everything. “Why else?”

She took in a shaky breath, trying to compose herself as she avoided his gaze.

“It’s just…I couldn’t take it anymore. It hurt to be around you and not have you there with me. Every time we were together, your mind was always someplace else: buried in work, always trying to busy yourself so you could forget everything. And it made me realize something that’s always been there: that you cared about this city more than you could ever care about me.”

He wanted to comment that _of course_ he loved Gotham more than anything, because the mission came before everything else; it had even become a cost that his children were willing to fight (and die) for. What could be considered their romance meant nothing in the grand scheme of things, that she could even be called selfish for wanting something as trivial as his affections in the face of threats such as killer clowns and venom-hungry luchadors.

But the words died on his tongue. He couldn’t afford to break her heart further.

A heartbeat passed between them, and he could hear his lungs heave painfully. “Selina, I’m sorry.”

She shook her head sadly. “No, Bruce, _I’m_ sorry.”

And he didn’t stop her as she opened the doors to his manor, and between her and the large oak carvings he could see the headlights of a taxi. No doubt she had made the drive all the way here just to say her farewells. There was a possibility that she could have just left without him knowing, and it broke him even more that she chose to part with him properly.

She bit down her lip and the tears spilled quietly. “Well, then, I guess this is it for us.”

And she looked back at him one last time, and in those few seconds, he tried to immortalize just how green her eyes were, how dangerous her gaze was, and how it broke what remained of his dead heart at that exact moment.

“Goodbye, Mr. Wayne.”

And the doors slammed shut, leaving him alone.

He wouldn’t see her again for ten years.

* * *

He wakes up at 8 AM, and doesn’t realize he had fallen asleep; his alarm had been set for 9:30, but the sunlight wafting through his large windows stirred him before then. Judging by the clanking coming from the kitchen down the hall, Alfred started making breakfast already. Bruce grunts as he gets up, his shoulder still throbbing with pain from the wound from last night, and he guides his arms slowly through his dress shirt and buttons it only halfway. He begins each step intently towards the kitchen.

“Alfred?” he calls, entering the expanse of the house as the smell of eggs hits his rumbling stomach.

“Nope,” a voice replies, and he turns to the stove to see Selina there, sitting on the kitchen counter as she drinks from a mug. “He made me some coffee before he went. Said he had business to attend to.”

He strides to her slowly and takes a seat on the stool across her, groaning as he lifted his heavy body up on the chair. “Did he say where he was going?”

She shakes her head as she downs the last of her coffee. “Secrecy seems to be the new trend in this house.”

That meant Alfred went down to the cave. Bruce rubs his heavy eyes, his vision starting to clear up in the morning light.

She pushes a plate of steaming eggs towards him. “Here, I just heated up whatever looked like breakfast in your fridge. You better eat it before it gets cold.”

He blinks, taking a fork. “Thanks.”

She rolls her eyes as she puts her empty mug and finished utensils down on the kitchen sink, then promptly sits down next to him. Upon closer inspection, he recognizes the coat that he draped over her when she slept on the couch last night; the beige and length of the lapels over her high-necked suit makes it look almost fashionable. Her short dark hair sticks up at odd angles like a nest, and she didn’t even bother to flatten them down.

He pokes his eggs with the fork. “Why’d you come back to Gotham?”

She sighs and rolls her eyes, as if it’s the easiest question in the world. “I’ve already told you: there was a challenge and I wanted t—”

“The _real_ reason,” he interjects, making them lock eyes with each other.

He underestimated the distance between them. She’s only a few inches away.

Her green eyes flicker away, back to her interlocked hands on the table. Licking her lips as if to taste the words on her tongue, she tries her best not to glance at him.

“I never wanted to come back here. This place had nothing else for me—nothing good, at least. I was…well, happy isn’t the word, but out there, I didn’t have a care in the world: travelling all over Europe, seeing the sights, charming the men…it was like that for ten years. Gotham was the last thing on my mind.” Her face darkens, his eyes steady on her. “Then I heard on the news what happened in Metropolis. That whole Doomsday thing with Superman.”

A moment of grief hits him, that terrible heaviness in his chest reminiscing the very image of Clark dead in Lois Lane’s arms. It’s nothing but past now, since he’s fully aware Clark is very much alive, but it still digs a knife into him whenever it comes back.

“And at that moment, I remembered you,” she continues, the genuine feelings from within her spilling into her words, even though she is unaware of it. “I was…I was _worried_ about you. But I spent such a long time debating whether coming back was really worth all the trouble, so by the time I made a decision to get a ticket, the world was struck by that mess with Steven, or whatever the hell his name is.”

“Steppenwolf,” he corrects, reminiscing that incredible misadventure with his newfound…family, of sorts.

“Yeah, him,” she shrugs dismissively, refusing to look at him. “And in that whole fight, I saw you band together with your Justice League, with all these different people. I saw you change, I saw that you were different from the man who used to shut people out. So I thought, hey, he’s letting back people into his life, so why couldn’t _I_ come b—?”

And her eyes widen, she freezes, her face flushing. She knows she’s said too much. He knows exactly what she was going to tell him.

The silence festering between them is agony.

She shakes her head, shutting her eyes as she waves it off. “Look, forget I said anything.”

He feels his heart fracture right down the middle. “Selina—”

“God, this was stupid,” she murmurs to herself, standing up and walking away from him. “I should’ve just gone home last night, I can’t believe I stayed here.”

She tries to compose herself again, closing her eyes as she takes shaky breaths in and out. And for once, he allows himself to feel hurt, and the pain rips through his chest like someone’s clawing out his heart.

 _Now_ he remembers why he tried so hard to push her away in the past.

He stands up and walks towards her. “Did you miss me?”

She turns around, as if to confront him. “I don’t think now’s really the time to—”

He’s in front of her now, and there’s only a thin gap separating their bodies. He can smell the coffee on her lips, and takes in the shock in her eyes at such a close view, repeating the words softly, slowly.

“Did you miss me?”

She sighs, as if debating whether to tell the truth or not, and her final answer is devoid of lies. “I did.” There’s enough courage in her for her to reach up and trace his jawline with her careful hands. “I still do.”

They’re so fucking close, he thinks he can hear her heartbeat. He hesitates to lean in and hold her. He wants to kiss her.

He _needs_ to kiss her.

He doesn’t.

She takes a few steps back, drawing her hand away, tearing her gaze away from him. “I’ve been thinking about what Elliot said, about that whole ‘strike from a distance’ crap from last night. Maybe it’s a warning telling us to create a little space.” She pockets her hands in his coat, and he repeats to himself that she looks so damn beautiful in it. “I think it’ll do some good, you know; give some time to think about us for a while.”

He’s silent. He knows his absence of an answer makes the tension around them even tauter, but it’s the necessary evil.

“I should really get going,” she says as emotionlessly as she could, making her way to his door as she fixes the coat’s lapels. “Hope you don’t mind that I keep this for the time being.”

“I don’t,” he replies; he was planning to give it to her anyway.

It’s unlike the day they thought they would part for good. He stood there, unable to walk her to the door as she opened it herself, turning her head to give him a sad smile. The morning light casts itself around her like a halo, and he feels himself fall.

“Goodbye, Bruce.”

The door clicks shut. There’s still uneasiness in him, though little of it is quenched by the fact that she called him 'Bruce' instead of 'Mr. Wayne'.

* * *

He remembers that he destroyed his laptop when that strange enigma-loving hacker asshole spilled to him the truth about the Bat. It infuriates him sometimes—how his anger can get the better of him, and so he promises himself to try and stay calm in future situations (even though he knows he isn’t going to keep that anytime soon).

So he has no choice but to go to the main computer server in the hospital’s basement downstairs, rewire the old crappy CPU from almost nothing, just to program a good hardware to connect to his old gear. It nearly takes him the whole day, and by the time the mercenaries tell him dusk is around the corner, he only managed to finish mapping Gotham in ones and zeroes. However, when he has his virtual map set up, it doesn’t take him long to type in his tracking device address, and while it takes a few extra minutes for the CPU to scan the whole area of Gotham, he nearly collapses in exasperation once it finally beeps in alarm that it’s found a place.

And when he zooms in on the address that the tracking device led to, he could only smirk behind his bandages as he clutched the jade necklace around his neck, thanking his lucky charm once again.

264 Fairview Apartments on Harlow Street, East End. A place that belonged to none other than the cat burglar he had spent hours trying to pin down.

He’s only lucky she took his wallet with the tracking device, that day when they bumped into each other at the airport.

* * *

It takes him a while to stretch his bad arm before he clicks the keyboard, answering the video call. A window with Clark Kent’s blurry face pops up on one of his monitors, while the one opposite to it shows the view the camera gets of the cave, from Bruce’s sleepless face to the new utility belt he was busy working on the desk behind him.

“Morning, Bruce,” Clark greets with a signature smile, while Bruce sees his response in the camera as he wipes his mangy stubble.

“Morning…” he mutters back and glances at the corner clock, which reads 1:43 AM. “What are you doing up so late?”

“I called to ask _you_ that,” Clark returns, the angled brows of his symmetrical face furrowing.

“Justice never sleeps,” Bruce sighs, tired of the mantra he used to repeat to Alfred whenever his butler would tell him to take at least an hour’s nap.

He walks back to his table, still in full view of the camera, and attaches one notch of the belt towards the end; the motion detectors of his computer adjust and set the video call to full screen. Bruce deduces from the quality of Clark’s camera and his surroundings that he’s calling from Lois’ laptop on the kitchen counter of their rural home, the one he had to buy a whole bank to get back.

“How did you get access to this channel?” Bruce asks without tearing his eyes away from his work; the cave’s encryptions are stronger than even military-level AI, and a simple video call from a journalist’s laptop isn’t going to connect to a supercomputer that easily.

“Your butler gave me the address to hit. He told me to guard it with my life.”

Bruce let a sigh go. “You better. Why did you call?”

“I was hoping I could check on you. Usually, it’s your office secretaries or answering machines picking up lately.”

Bruce doesn’t reply. A pause goes between the two men as he attaches another pocket to the hooks of the belt. He feels Clark’s eyes watching him, and he doesn’t like it.

“You look…tired,” Clark comments.

“Don’t you mean more than usual?” Bruce adds.

“Yeah, I do,” Clark seems to laugh, always the boy scout. “Something happen to you lately?”

His mind immediately drifts over to Selina; he pushes the thought away as fast as it came. “You should know that you should use this channel to contact me for _emergency purposes,_ not—”

“Oh, man, something _did_ happen,” Clark cut in. “Come on, Bruce. Was it another incident with the Joker?” Bruce resists the urge to rolls his eyes as he stands up straight, exasperatedly bearing with his scrutinizing friend. “Wait…is it a woman?”

And images of Selina wearing his coat, sleeping on his couch, nearly kissing him, flood in. “Can you not t—?”

“Bruce Wayne, having trouble with women…now isn’t that something!” Clark’s grinning idiotically, and if he wasn’t an incredibly powerful alien who could lift a NASA rocket like it was a living room sofa, he would have been beaten to a pulp many months ago.

There’s shuffling in Clark’s background. “Oh, who are you talking to?”

Bruce looks up to the screen, and from behind Clark’s massive shoulders, a bright-eyed red-haired woman peers curiously into the screen. “Bruce? Is that you?”

“Lois,” he greets. “You mind telling your boyfriend here to lay off personal business?”

“We’re friends, Bruce; when it comes to relationships, there _is_ no ‘personal business’,” Clark leans forward into the camera so that Lois could sit on the same chair as him.

“You know, he _is_ right, though,” Lois says to Clark.

Clark turns back to look at her. “About what?”

Lois shrugs. “If he’s having relationship problems, let him figure it out himself.” She looks at him through the camera. “Unless, of course, you’d want some help?”

Bruce leans back on the table. “No: I never asked for help, I’m not having relationship problems, end of story.”

There’s a brief pause, and the interruption of that silence came from Clark. “That’s something a person with relationship problems would say.”

Lois slaps his shoulder, as if scolding a child. “Clark!”

Clark smiles. “Okay, okay! I’m sorry.”

Bruce watches as the couple laughs in front of him, and it somehow leaves a hollow feeling in his chest that he tries to shake off.

“When you’re done," Bruce brings the attention back, "I’d like to remind you to never use this channel again unless it’s a dire emergency. You know your computer now has access to the cave’s communications, and in the wrong hands, it could be dangerous.”

“Alright, Bruce, we’ll be careful,” Clark’s voice seems to pat his shoulder. “But you take it easy, okay?”

“I will,” Bruce says, the corners of his lips twitching upward. “Take care.”

Clark gives a charming smile while Lois waves goodbye; the former clicks a button on the laptop and both camera windows morph into one blank screen, indicating the call has ended.

Bruce puts his hands on the table and sighs, hanging his head and staring at his gear, and from behind him, digital maps of Gotham are constantly being scanned for crime reports based on surveillance. When the metronome-like beeping begins to grate on his ears, he shuts his eyes and tries to clear his thoughts, trying to see if he could drown it all out in his fatigue and see if rest is really worth his time.

_Empty your mind._

_Breathe._

_Think of nothing._

_Fuck, the smell of her has always been the same: that mix of sweat, danger, and perfume that had always sent him reeling._

_Her smile, that laugh, the way she would jump right into the jaws of danger and weave through thugs and bullets so effortlessly._

_Years in Europe have treated her well; her skin is still flawless, the bite in her quips is still there…and she’s still so goddamn beautiful—_

His eyes shoot open, and the beeping scanners return to him. The reverb of his thumping heart echoes throughout his chest and catches him off-guard.

_You don’t need her._

He’s lying to himself.

_Shut up._

He remembers her sad smile the day she left, the way his coat draped over her shoulders, that sly smile behind her goggles the night they broke into the Gotham City Bank bringing back memories when they first kissed on the rooftop all those years ago.

_That’s enough._

He can’t erase her from his mind. She’s there, she’s always been there, in all the flings he had, in the nights he spent with Jezebel, was he only looking for her? How shallow can he really be?

_You need to stop this._

But for once, he resists fighting and lets his thoughts flow in, his supressed intentions making themselves clear without the chains of his hard exterior bringing them down. And his whole being aches like it never has before, showing him why it all must be pushed down, away from the sight of any enemy, lest he show one of his greatest weaknesses.

It’s still a flaw, and the Bat should have none.

_But you want her…you need her back in your li—_

With a frustrated yell, he picks up the belt and throws it on the floor, watching as it shatters into pieces he had been assembling for over three hours. He shuts his eyes and covers his face with a hand, the beeping from his computers now louder and more monotone than ever in the silence.

* * *

Her darlings never fail to be demanding, as they always are, and by the time she empties out the first bag of Kitty Crunch Bites for her many cats, a number of strays definitely more than a dozen swarm around her balcony area, meowing in hunger. Much to her disappointment, she had used up her last bag and had to go to the 24-hour convenience store from across the street just to satisfy them.

Not that she’s complaining, of course. She’d do anything for her darlings.

One of the things she regrets immediately, however, is grabbing the wrong coat on her way out. Instead of reaching for the black winter one that Holly had gotten her for Christmas how many ages ago, she donned the beige wide-shouldered trench coat that Bruce had given her yesterday morning. So while half of her mind is going through the tiny aisles of the pet section of the store looking for the biggest pack of tuna-flavored Kitty Crunch Bites, the other half is busy trying to ignore the scent that clung to the jacket: Tom Ford Tobacco Oud with residues of his sweat and the natural musk that clung to him, that same aroma that lulled her to sleep on his couch that other night—

And she goes back to the teenage cashier once she realizes that she forgot to pay; the cashier mutters under his frustrated breath that he had been calling her attention for nearly five minutes.

Once she gets back to her apartment, her eager cats follow her to the kitchen as she opens the bag with a huge pair of shears, then spills nearly half of its contents on the bowls set on her balcony. And at first, she’s debating whether to really keep the coat with her or lock it away in her closet, never to be seen again in order to keep supressed memories where they should belong. But watching her lovelies have their dinner with the smell of him filling her lungs makes her feel a little less alone.

And a whole lot more pathetic.

She sighs as she collapses on the kitchen counter stool, shutting her eyes as she wraps her arms around herself, around his coat. Some of the older cats begin to crowd around her, purring as they wind around her legs and rub against her arms. Though she smiles as she tries her best to pet all of them, she can’t completely rub off the shame from the day before.

Of course she’s a fool for running her mouth off like that, exposing that side of her to him, a side that she hasn’t shown anybody in ten years. How stupid is it that she could even _think_ that he would take her back into her life like that, just because he welcomed a new family?

Is she still even family?

She’s so tired of constantly giving, never receiving. Then again, she had fallen in love with a man who, in turn, had fallen in love with a whole city, a city that may never even love him back.

She used to hate how he always put the mission before her in the past, but now after her own version of a soul-searching journey throughout the beautiful scenery of Europe, she’s come to accept the painful reality: that it will _always_ be that way, that his crusade against crime will always come before anything; and that maybe he never really loved her, and maybe that’s okay.

Being Bruce Wayne, infamous handsome billionaire playboy, even international news tried getting scoops on his latest conquests, so she would always be aware of his countless flings. Perhaps the most interesting one he’s had over the past decade was that beautiful African model Jezebel Jet, and the fact that he could get over her like that in the span of a few years meant that perhaps she mattered little to him.

(And of course, despite her many encounters with all those gorgeous French gentlemen, the wounds on her heart from Bruce are still fresh, and she knows they’ll always be so.)

She can feel herself smiling, despite everything.

He had been the first person to ever believe in her, to see through those walls she put up around herself to mask her insecurities, to break through all those barriers and help her embrace her for who she wanted to be. He made her feel beautiful, and she couldn’t help but find herself slowly falling with each night time encounter, each chase in the dark, each kiss under the moonlight.

It’s all gone now, nothing but past mistakes. She knows that he likes to think of them but nothing as that.

And yet, she still loves him. After all this time—

A knock on the door interrupts her thoughts. Her cats quickly disperse into different corners of the house as she gets up to answer it. However, her heart nearly skips a beat when she opens the door.

“Bruce?” she asks once she sees him at her doorstep, then realizes with horror that he’s sweating beneath his large brown coat, clutching his side as blood seeps through his gloved fingers. “Oh my God!”

“Selina, please—” and he cuts himself up with a groan, collapsing on his own weight if not for her quick reflexes hoisting him back up again.

“Come on, Bats…” she sighs as she helps him lie down on the couch, the cats around her scurrying far away at his sight, some being gutsy enough to hiss at his figure.

She kneels in front of him, checking the blood at his side as she brushes off a few sweaty locks from his visage, and she nearly gasps; almost every inch of his skin is covered in sutures, as if he had undergone surgery.

“Dammit,” she traced her fingers over the scars, “what happened to your face?”

“It was…it was Thomas,” he says in pain, his voice more raspy than usual as she goes down to check on his wound. “I tried to disguise myself and find his hideout, but his mercenaries ambushed me. There were too many of them and I—argh!”

“It looks bad,” she shakes her head as she retracts her hand from inspecting the wound. “Don’t move, I’ll be right back.”

She stands up to retreat into the kitchen, fully aware that her counter and cupboards block his line of sight from the couch. Hidden beneath that simple maze, she pretends that she’s looking for a sewing kit, bandages, or anything that would help him, when in reality, she’s doing her best to look natural looking for that pair of shears that she used to open her cat food earlier.

That isn’t Bruce. Bruce would never sound like that.

From the corner of her eyes, she spots the blades a few steps away on the counter table. And in a quick motion, she grabs and throws them towards the couch.

The doppelgänger simply sits up in time, and the large scissors rip apart the fabric on the couch where his crotch would have been.

“And here I thought I was doing so well,” the stranger got up, his voice now much more deeper, darker, familiar, carefully preparing a stance as the cats around him begin to yowl in warning. “What gave it away? The over-the-top acting?"

She knits her brows, readying her sharp nails. “That and the crappy voice.”

“Well, no matter,” the stranger with Bruce’s face taunts, pulling a pistol from his coat. “The plan must push on forward.”

And dozens of gunshots ripple throughout the apartment. She’s quick to react quickly runs towards him, slashing his wound and making him topple backwards in pain. She scratches through his coat and tries to move to his face, but he manoeuvres his way out and pushes her backwards into the counter. Even fighting someone who looks so much like Bruce feels so wrong.

“You’re so pathetic,” the stranger sneers, reloading his pistol with one hand as he defends himself from her scratches with the other. “Much the same as the various floozies and freaks Bruce Wayne has been with throughout his life.”

She lunges, kicking him in the solar plexus before trying to claw his face. He narrowly dodges and strikes her chin with his elbow.

“Be that as it may,” he shoots a few, misses all of them, and gets hit in the knee, “for reasons unknown, he's always had a soft spot for you.”

The strength in her next kick weakens. She wants to believe that too.

“And we both know he can be quite the unfeeling man,” he continues, takes her pounce and counters it, swinging her back to the kitchen as she struggles to get her balance back. “But he’s still human. And if he ever believed he would lose someone as close to him as you…well, how far is he willing to go?”

“Shut up!” she yells, sending a kick across his face and finally disarming him of his gun. “Just _shut up!_ Who the hell are you?!”

From his large sleeve, a slim and sharp blade slips from underneath his coat and straight into his hands. Before she could even react, his body is suddenly pressed against hers, the cold sting of the hidden knife buried deep within her abdomen. She chokes on her own words and spits out her own saliva, drops of her blood slowly staining the carpet.

“Hush, now…” the stranger coos, his lips right next to her ear.

In one fluid motion, he retracts the blade and allows her to fall, swooping her up on his shoulder. Scanning around the place, he takes the leather wallet on the coffee table, the very one she stole from him all those weeks ago. The cats are silent when he vanishes from the apartment, almost without a trace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so begins the third act of _Heart of Hush!_
> 
> If you still don’t get it, Hush was Doctor Loris Tate that Selina (as Catherina Dolores) bumped into in the airport; I’ve been dropping clues about it left and right throughout the chapters. And if you’re still not convinced, the name ‘Loris Tate’ is an anagram for Aristotle. 
> 
> A lot of this chapter took some work, especially the talk Bruce and Selina had in the kitchen. But I hope you had fun reading this as much as I did writing it.


	10. The High-Minded Man Must Care More for the Truth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An awakening. A threat too close to home. A first-class interrogation. A journey alone. A different kind of heart-taker. A helpless gamble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I borrowed some dialogue from _Heart of Hush,_ but I tried my best to add more new stuff to give it a fresh take. 
> 
> Oh, and I hope you miss Theodore Bryant.
> 
> Some female slurs are used here. You have been warned.

The first thing she does is wake up.

There’s still a pain in her abdomen whenever she tries to even move a finger, but her mind is reeling, the sounds around her blurry, all of the past events still lost in her throbbing head. But even if she blinks or shuts her eyes to open them again, she’s met with darkness and a biting cold. The coat Bruce had given her isn’t on her person anymore, and instead her shivering skin is cloaked in a hospital gown; gone are the clothes she had been sporting when she was taken from—

Oh, shit. Right.

She’d been kidnapped.

Suddenly, the adrenaline kicks in, the memories of the fight in her apartment with Bruce’s doppelgänger flooding into her with dread. She tries to get up from whatever she’s lying on, but she lifts her hands from above her head only to reveal her limbs had been cuffed to the surface. Whenever she tries to wriggle out or reach her long nails to pick the locks, the sting from her abdomen wound shoots up, forcing her to supress a groan of pain.

Then almost as if on cue, a large spotlight shines on her, and she looks what she’s lying on and begins to panic.

She’s chained to an operation table.

“It seems the patient is finally up,” an ominous voice slowly emerges from the distance, following a tall figure.

In the light of the surgical light, she recognizes the build of a man dressed in hospital robes. His latex-gloved hands are in the process of wrapping bandages to cover his face, and with each and every circular pass around his head, the sutures on Bruce Wayne’s likeness disappear behind the gauze, until he looks more like the demented and insane figure that had shot the real Bruce the night at the bank.

“Doctor Elliot,” she hisses, the anger building up in her beating chest. “What have you done to me, you sick fuck?”

“Relax, Catwoman,” he says calmly, putting a surgery mask around his mouth, and the next words become even more muffled than they were before. “I’ve only treated the abdomen wound I made to subdue you, nothing more.”

He turns around, and she can hear the clatter of metal tools on a nearby tray; with his back to her, she grits her teeth to swallow the pain as her sharp nails find the cuff lock binding her hands and begin to pick it.

“Your blood loss was less than I expected,” he continues preparing his materials. “Someone your age with such an active lifestyle has quite the BP level and pulse; almost that of an athlete, not that I’m surprised. But I need you to calm your heart rate for now. It isn’t going to do your body well to adjust at such a fast pace when we apply the—”

He stops himself to move to the side as her free hand reaches out to claw him, as the other one begins to free itself from the cuffs. But he’s fast to take advantage of her only available limb and redirects her scratch, leaving an opening to her face as he elbows her back onto the table. Her head falls with a painful thud, and the room begins to spin again.

“Now, now,” he chastises as he walks over to the side to cuff her free hand back. “I told you to calm down.” He took a napkin from another wheeled desk close to him and wipes the crimson liquid spilling from her nose. “Look at that. You’re losing blood again.”

“Screw you,” she spits the words as he disposes of the stained tissue.

“Where’s the gratitude in those words?” he brings the dish full of scalpels, syringes, and more strange medical tools closer to him, and her stomach seems to churn simply at the sight of them. “Believe it or not, I’m doing you a favor.”

“I don’t see how all of this is a favor,” she knits her brows, her teeth still clenched as he wipes the sweaty locks of hair from her forehead; the feeling of his fingers on her face makes her skin crawl.

“You don’t?” he feigns surprise.

“Bruce will find a way to stop you,” she seems to announce with conviction, even though the words hurt her. “He’ll know this is all some trap, he won’t fall for it.”

“If that’s the case,” he tilts his head curiously, his dark eyes locking with hers, “then you don’t know him as well as you think.”

She shakes her head. “He isn’t coming.”

“Well,” he seems to grin behind his mask, “he _will_ when he sees what prize I’ll get from you.” He turns back to grab one of the medium-sized scalpels from the tray. “Let’s begin the procedure, Nurse Margaret.”

A female’s dead voice is the one that answers. “Yes, Doctor.”

Before she can even react to the sudden presence of the assistant, a breathing mask surrounds her mouth and a chilly gas begins to fill her lungs, no matter how much she held her breath, struggled, or hacked away. Soon, the pain in her nose and the ache in her abdomen vanishes, followed by the feeling in her limbs, and her heavy eyelids finally give in and plunge her into darkness.

The last thing she thinks about is Bruce. She prays that he never comes, even though she knows there's a part of her that so desperately wants him here, with her.

* * *

He’s frustrated with himself for destroying his new utility belt like that, but he couldn’t help feel angry at that moment; perhaps it’s a result of the incredible suppression of his emotions. So after an incredibly uncalled-for meeting at the Skyline cut short by a phone call from Alfred thankfully calling him back to the house, it takes him another four hours that evening to reassemble it from those shattered pieces. Which is a good thing, because it keeps his mind far away from someone he would rather not much worry about.

But between the bolts and titanium pieces, his focus wavers until it becomes vulnerable enough.

_It’s been about thirty-six hours since you last saw her._

He rubs the bridge of his nose, sighing. He’s thinking about her again.

_Is she thinking about you too?_

She probably is, with that apparent reason she came back to Gotham after such a long time of absence.

 _She came back to Gotham for_ you. _She came back because she wants to be with you again. She came back because she loves you._

Fuck, she loves him. She loves him and he’s tossing it away, like he always had. Maybe she’s grown to understand how this vengeful quest against crime is the only thing he’ll hold in his heart, but he can’t help but feel she doesn’t deserve any of this, any of the pain that he’s inflicting on her. He cares for her…there’s a gaping hole in him that’s only complete when he’s with her.

_Do you love her?_

He scans his mind, staring blankly at his workspace, the belt and the pieces vanishing from his mind. He—

“Sir?” Alfred calls from the computer as he clicks a few buttons on the keypad, his voice shaking in urgency. “Sir, you must come see this.”

Bruce face contorts into a frown as he goes over to the monitors, where Alfred opens a file sent to them mere seconds ago, the label of i have what is yours unsettling the both of them to an insane degree. Once Alfred clicks it, out of the file pops multiple pictures of some sort of preservation machine comprised of pipes and cylinders around swirling mist, and looped hospital CCTV footage of a masked surgeon and nurse operating on a figure. More photographs begin to load, and one of them clearly captures the person on the surgery table: a woman with olive skin and short black hair.

Bruce’s body tenses.

“Oh no…” Alfred whimpers, as more and more fill up the screen.

The last picture, however, is simply that of the woman, lying peacefully. While her face looks calm, as if in deep sleep, a surgical cover conceals her bare body from the shoulders down. But the thing that sends surges of anger through Bruce’s body and nearly makes Alfred collapse onto the chair is the large, gaping hole in her chest cavity, where multiple wires and tubes of blood let liquid flow in and out.

A note is the last thing to load from the file.

bruce wayne  
i have what is yours.  
come and retrieve it, before i change my mind about what it means to be merciful.

“Oh my God…” Alfred murmurs, distraught, disturbed.

Bruce tries to become numb, but it isn’t working.

“Her heart…” Alfred struggles to explain, “he took her heart.”

Bruce doesn’t move, and the words that leave him are rich with stern intentions and seething ire underneath the false calm. “Trace back the message’s IP address.”

Alfred inputs a code, but the computer pops up a warning.

“The address is untraceable, Sir,” Alfred summarizes. “It doesn’t exist, according to the computer.”

Whoever sent the message must have deleted it to cover his tracks. Bruce says nothing; instead, he turns away from the computer and briskly walks towards the armory where his suit lay, not even bothering to look at his worried butler.

“Pin down Bryant’s tracking device now,” Bruce commands, his voice just as terrifying.

“Master Wayne?” Alfred calls as he takes a seat in the chair, following Bruce with his eyes. “Please, Sir, you have to calm down before y—”

“I said: _now,_ Alfred,” he growls, and their eyes lock; the rage is already pulsing through his calm expression, the cracks in his façade visible in the clenched jaw, grinding teeth, and balled fists. His eyes border on sadness, frustration, pure and utter ire.

Alfred suppresses a shudder as he nods, and Bruce descends down the stairs to don the cowl. With shaking hands, the butler types in the coordinates, and the scanners begin to look for Theodore Bryant across the city.

* * *

The blonde-haired beauty whose name eludes him until now had been tempting him for the entirety of the party. Of course, Bryant Industries’ penthouse is a lavish place, large enough for the most enjoyable of high-class gatherings, so finding her red dress between the tuxedos and gowns isn’t supposed to be hard. But eventually, he spots her waiting by the sliding door of the balcony, something of a sultry smile on her crimson lips as she beckons towards him with a finger. He smiles, putting his champagne flute on a tray as he goes towards her, vanishing from his own event.

They go outside onto the balcony as he presses her against a wall, kissing her senseless. He feels the texture of her lipstick stick to his mouth as he traces a line along her neck, her groans urging him more. One of her legs hooks around his waist, her nails raking along the lapels of his jacket as she struggles to take it off. He tightens, curses, hitching her dress up to her waist as he feels her lacy lingerie, already slick and wet between his fingers.

“Oh… _fuck,”_ she whimpers, cries. “Theo, I…”

“Shh…” he seals her mouth with another kiss as he inserts another finger, coaxing her slowly. “Quiet now, darling.”

She gasps against his touch, pressing his face closer to the crook of her neck as her eyes flutter. “I…I need—”

But she screams suddenly, his eyes fly open, and before any of the two can react, a dark shadow pulls him off balance away from her, knocking his head onto the hard pavement of the balcony. The woman shrieks, and before she could run back into the party to alert everyone, a projectile hits her on the back of the neck and she falls unconscious on the cold floor.

“Wh…huh…?” Theo supports himself, rubbing his bleeding temple.

He doesn’t have time to stand up when something strong grabs him by the legs, dragging him somewhere. He tries his best to scream before a cold cord goes around his feet, and the rush of wind lifts him up over the balcony nearly seven floors above, upside down. His hands are too weak to try and reach up to untie himself, and the skyline of Gotham, accompanied by the strong breezes at the top of his building, drains all the blood from his face.

Before he’s even given a chance to breathe, a force turns him around until he’s face to face with the visage of darkness, standing on a cornice, sneering.

All the remaining breath in his lungs is expelled in a scream.

“Theodore Bryant,” the Dark Knight growls in a terrible voice. “Let’s do this quickly so no one gets hurt.”

“Oh, God…” Theodore cries, holding up his hands. “Listen, I’ve done nothing wrong—”

And the cord suddenly drops a few feet before suddenly stopping and jerking Theodore’s entire body. He isn’t given any time to yell, and the air escapes his mouth in a frightened cough and whimper.

“Don’t talk unless I ask you a question,” the Bat says from above him, and it becomes visible at this angle that he's holding a cord in one of his gloved gauntlets.

Theodore lets out a sob, but he says nothing else.

“Thomas Elliot,” the darkness asks. “You’ve been connected to him through underground banking accounts. What’s his location?”

A shiver goes through his spine at the mention of the name. “I…I don’t know who you’re talking ab—”

And the cord drops again, stops again, and Theodore feels salty bile at the back of his tongue, the taste of his own fear. There's no doubt that the Bat is on his way to him, but if he's to give out Thomas' location and he survives that confrontation, who's to say that Theodore won't be punished for letting his tongue slip? Besides, wasn't the Bat known for not killing? That's a thing, right?

“Wrong answer,” the Bat pushes, his voice growing in frustration. _“Where?”_

“I…” Theodore struggles to say anything at all, his heaving breaths getting in the way of his words. “I can’t…I-I don’t…”

The wire drops even further, until Theodore feels his screams merge with the fast winds speeding past his pale face. When it stops, he feels like his legs are about to snap off; down below, there’s still a number of meters before he hits the floor.

“Try,” the Bat growls.

“P-Please…” Theodore whimpers, giving it up; he feels like he's dead anyway. “S…Sacred Heart…his hideout is at Sacred Heart Hospital.”

“Good.”

Before Theodore could react, the wire lowers with a slightly slower speed, and he lands with a thud on the floor, his face still surprisingly intact. When he gets up and looks around for his phone to call the GCPD, the figure on his rooftop is gone, along with the cord tied around him.

* * *

The large metal door of the car slides above his head, and closes with the sealed latches locking it in place. He eases himself into the driver’s seat as the engine roars to life, the multiple computers and buttons on the interior buzzing as if in greeting. He flips a switch and the headlights glow the midnight streets before him, and he shifts the car into gear before pressing the gas and thundering like a rampage into the night.

“Alfred,” he speaks into the communications channel, “give me directions to Sacred Heart Hospital.”

“Sending them to you now,” Alfred replies, and the computer beeps once it receives it.

He brings up the virtual GPS of Gotham, and the directions are displayed through red lines twisting through coded roads, identifying the quickest route to the abandoned hospital in the middle of midtown. The wheel spins a hard right and speeds down Harrington Street, the fire of the car’s turbines sending him as fast as a bullet. The destination is seven miles away.

”How is she?” he asks, the words heavy on his tongue.

Alfred’s probably hacking into Sacred Heart’s working surveillance, looking through each camera until he finds the one watching her body. “She…she looks fine, Sir. She doesn’t seem to be in any pain, if that’s any solace.”

It should be, but it isn’t. He grips the steering wheel harder, pushing half of his body weight into the gas as he prays for the car to go _more_ than two hundred miles per hour.

“Do you require backup, Sir?” Alfred asks. “If you like, I could contact the League and they’ll be able to—”

“Don’t,” the Bat interrupts, frightened at the mere proposal of it. “This is _my_ fight. Thomas will be expecting me and me alone. If he even senses that he’s at a slight disadvantage, he’ll have a kill switch for whatever’s holding her heart.”

“Yes, Sir,” Alfred replies. “However, the computer can’t seem to find the location of the machine. You’ll have to talk to Master Elliot to find out where it is. Though ‘talk’ wouldn’t necessarily be the word I’d use.”

The Bat clenches his jaw, trying to control his breathing. He turns another left, and the car continues to ride into the dead air of the night. There are six miles left.

* * *

He knows he’s here. There’s something about the change of the atmosphere in the whole building that almost heightens his attention to be a tier above paranoid. The night that had used to blend him in, the darkness that he thought of as so familiar, has become suddenly a stranger; they are not on his side anymore. The hallways are empty, some of the florescent lights flickering due to the slightly dilapidated state of the cardio wing. What would have normally been a bustling place full of patients and doctors and nurses is now echoing with his tired footsteps, devoid of anything except the occasional mercenary passing by. There’s a strange adrenaline pumping through his veins as his fingers fix his red gloves onto his hands, then straighten the lapels of his brown coat.

He’s here.

He sees the stairwell at the end of the hall, and unconsciously picks up his pace. A switch sounds at the corner of the corridor behind him, and the bulbs shut down, one at a time, starting with the farthest one moving towards him. His stride’s rhythm goes hand in hand with the way the lights die out as he struggles to outrun the gloom.

One. Two. One. Two. One. Two.

By the time the last light at the end of the hall dies out and the whole place is blanketed in shadow, he draws his pistols and turns around behind him. But before he could even pull the triggers, a darkness swoops forward and lands a hard kick on his side as he begins to fire blindly, the ripple of gunshots breaking the tranquility of the place.

A yell escapes him as he feels the hard doors of the fire exit against his spine, the balustrade tripping above his feet. But before he falls into the spiraling stairwell, a rough hand grabs the collar of his coat as a booming burst fills his ears. When the dust settles and his mind is no longer ripped apart by dread, the shadows are tangible before him, holding him by the lapels with one hand, with the other arm above his head to hang onto the grappling gun. He’s staring into eyes that are filled with anger, an indescribable rage almost unlike anything he’s ever seen. He smirks.

_Perfect._

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t break your neck,” the shadows growl before him.

“You can’t,” he could laugh, but the pain at his side from the kick still throbs. “You _won’t._ And if I die, the secrets to her heart die with me.”

 _“Why Selina?”_ the Bat grinds his teeth, spits out his words, and there’s a rare sense of fear that’s overcoming Thomas’ nerves, something he wants to be feeling.

“Because I wanted to strike you in the most painful way possible,” Thomas hisses back, but not to the same magnitude; he only knows that his words will bite deep, and that’s enough. “Because I know what that gutter slut means to you, even if you deny it to yourself. Because it doesn’t matter who you’re with—superhero freak or sycophantic social climber—there’s only been one woman who’s ever held your heart.”

The Bat flings him like a rag doll and his back collides with the 2nd floor landing, his entire body aching as a hiss escapes him.

“And now,” Thomas gets up, still unable to wipe the grin off his face, “I have hers.”

The darkness plants its feet with a brusque grace in front of him, seething coils of the cape’s hem flowing around a large form, building the Bat to be as intimidating a monster as the urban legends of Gotham say he is. But Thomas is far from scared, he’s ecstatic; he’s found a method to strip away the monster and find his weak, human shell underneath. How vulnerable has he grown simply for one person.

“What choice do you have, Bruce?” Thomas mocks once he sees the Bat clench his fists.

And really, what can the invincible Dark Knight do now?

The silence is deafening; in the terrible quiet, the discordant voice replies, dejected, defeated.

“Take me to her.”

* * *

Thomas navigates the hospital well, he notices: each and every single turn is done with full knowledge of the map, despite the massive size of cardio wing. He must have bought the property the entire institute stands on, and he could easily purchase the whole deal using only a small portion of his family’s fortune. Though the Elliots were not as affluent as the Waynes, they were still the envy of most wealthy clans in Gotham. Every single step Thomas leads through the hallways, they’re occasionally met with a nurse or armed man, who cower away from the Bat’s glare.

“Who are they?” the Bat asks, his inharmonious tone of speaking still horrific despite his resigned attitude.

“Mercenaries, old friends who owe me favors,” Thomas ends up scoffing and mutters underneath his breath. “More like owe my _parents_ favors. Still, I use what I can.”

He stares around at the different infirmary rooms, most of them probably empty. But he’s well aware that one of them is not, occupied with the body of the woman he—

“She's one of these rooms, isn’t she?” the Bat growls.

Thomas seems to laugh darkly. “My, you ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”

The Bat narrows his eyes.

They stop at a certain door, and when Thomas opens it, their eyes are met with darkness, a strange blue light emanating from the center of the room, a chilly air escaping through. But once the doctor flips a switch, a lone light from above illuminates the whole place dimly but further, revealing a colossal machine that takes up half of the floor space, reaching towards the ceiling with its pipes and steam capsules. Tubes snake all around the different chambers, conduits, and all kinds of conductors of metal and liquid. The Bat’s eyes scan the whole machine once Thomas slams the door behind him, looking for a weakness. Perhaps the large pipe carrying what seems to be cleansed liquid into a steaming tube, or the power conductor by the side of the largest cylinder? The project looks incredibly familiar, like he’s dealt with this kind of architecture before.

“I’m not just a proficient neurosurgeon,” Thomas boasts, continuing to guide him towards a certain part of the machine, as the cold of the atmosphere turns his words into frosty breath. “One of my PhD degrees was in cardiology. While I was studying, I digested everything I could in matters of the heart: how to restart it, remove it, operate on it, test how long it could last outside the body given certain conditions…”

Thomas lifts a metal plate on one of the cylinders, and types in a code on the keypad there; the Bat makes a mental note of the pin that he uses. “You might recognize the familiar design of the machine. I was able to get into contact with one of your many enemies: a peculiar man by the name of Victor Fries. His research on cryogenic preservation of biological material was an important asset to this project. He offered to assist me, only because my parents left me a staggering amount of money when they died, poor things.”

A panel moves upward, further illuminating the blue light from before. And before them, inside a container filled with a bubbling and cold fluid, is a red organ floating in the middle of the cylinder. All of the veins and arteries cut around it are attached to different wires, and meters above the viewing window move in tandem with its constant beating.

The Bat feels his own break.

“There it is, Bruce,” Thomas announces. “Selina Kyle’s heart: yours for the taking. The irony is staggering.”

The Bat doesn’t turn to him, his eyes locked on the organ. “You’re going to tell me how her heart can be restored to her or I will…”

His tongue suddenly loosens, and he can’t feel his mouth, then his arms. His whole body begins to grow numb, as if he’s put under some kind of anaesthesia, but he remains as awake and as vigilant, making him more and more aware of the parts of his nerves that die off.

“I will…what…?” he mutters, “…what is this?”

Thomas huffs, the smirk on his face shining through the bandages. “Ever since you set foot in this room, the gas that you’ve been breathing in is a chemical compound specially made to attack your nerves, rendering you immobile and yet conscious. Good thing I've been taking an antidote to help me combat its effects.”

“Damn…you…” he struggles to say as his own legs collapse under him, his tongue stiffening, “…Elliot…”

“Hush…” Thomas puts a finger to his lips as the other gloved hand snaps his fingers, and from the outside, two nurses rush in with a stretcher. “It’s taken me nearly a decade to complete this plan, and it’s all coming together. With how intelligent the rumors say you are, I’m surprised it took you so long to find out.”

The two nurses hoist the Bat's numb body onto the stretcher, as Thomas unbuckles the belt at his waist before tossing it far away.

“To think that you believed I was after Theodore Bryant and his young industry after all this time! You really are still just as stupid as when we were children. No…little Theodore was only a means to an end, an effort to get closer to the roots of your company and tear it apart from the inside. After all, we know how generous your corporation can be with its business partners.”

They buckle the Bat’s chest and legs to the stretcher, his arms useless at his side. He tries to clench his jaw, the only part of his body he could control, as his focus slips from his fingertips.

“I never thought you’d have such a pitiful weakness,” Thomas pushes the stretcher until the Bat’s face has a clear view of the chamber which held the heart. “Of all things the fearsome Bat of Gotham could have as his Achilles’ heel, the one thing that could bring him to his knees—begging for mercy like a child—is the heart of a woman. How tragic…and so utterly pathetic.”

The doctor continues to press controls on the keypad of the large machine, and he reads the resulting code on another screen. “Even with the marvels of advanced technology, the heart can only beat for so long outside the body.”

“How…” the Bat struggles to talk, but the wrath is still there, “…long?”

Thomas smirks and turns to his lying form. “It’s been preserved here for five hours. About three more and…well, let’s not think about what would happen if Selina Kyle ran on life support for the remainder of her sad existence.” He scoffs, looking at the heart beat on as he brandishes a remote from his coat, teasing his thumb over the switch. “I can admit to my own faults: the mechanical heart I hooked her up to was built to last a few weeks. But it could easily be shut down with the press of one button.”

The very thought of it seems to reinvigorate his fists enough for him to clench them. “You…wouldn’t dare—”

“Oh, I very much _would_ dare,” Thomas interrupts. “You’re such a blind fool that you can’t see how much you have to lose. I’m going to destroy _every single thing_ you love, and you’re going to watch helplessly, just as your wretched family did to me all those years ago.”

The Bat has to lower himself, grovel. It’s the only way to get close, in the state he’s in now. “Thomas…please…”

The doctor turns to him, his eyes curious yet unforgiving.

“Haven’t…listened to…my offer…yet…” he forces the words out as much as he could, and they still come out soft.

“Out of pity,” Thomas bends over Bruce’s body, his ear close to his mouth, “let’s hear you out.”

The Bat uses his teeth clamp onto Thomas’ jade necklace dangling over his mouth and pulls his upper body forward, giving Thomas a head-butt to the nose. The doctor reels back as he uses his hand to cover his bleeding bandages, and the nurses begin to take action, strapping the Bat onto the bed tighter as he continues to struggle. He recalculates his odds and every single possibility, using all the limited energy he has into cutting the binding on his waist using the prongs of his gauntlets, slowly, discretely.

“You’ve pushed my hand,” Thomas hisses, hitting a button on the machine. “And now I will show no mercy.”

The Bat watches the bubbling liquid around the heart stop moving. The churning gears stop, the meters shut down, panic begins to crawl in. Sirens suddenly blare around the contraption, warning anyone around it that it had been shut down, as Thomas brings up a radio and mutters something indistinct into the speaker.

The sharp prongs on his gauntlets snap the cord; at least small victories come when he needs them to.

Once the Bat feels the binding loosen, he holds a lungful of breath and springs up from the bed, quickly taking out one of the armed nurses with a strong punch to the windpipe and a kick to the solar plexus. It takes him a few seconds on his feet to adjust to his still disoriented mind, watching his spinning vision as the second nurse rushes towards him with a scalpel. He swiftly disarms her with a few hits to sensitive points in her arm, then grabs her head and swings her towards a nearby wall, knocking her unconscious.

“No!” Thomas yells, escaping using a nearby door.

The deafening alarms, his inability to exhale, Thomas’ escape, and the weakness of his own body all come crashing down on him. His cunning mind is caught off guard as he searches the dim room for his utility belt, careful not to breathe in any more of the air and budgeting what remaining oxygen he has in his lungs. But he feels the relief flood through him once his fingertips feel the familiar titanium alloy, as he searches all of the pockets desperately for his gas mask. He takes in a shaky breath once he presses the contraption to his nose and mouth, but the job isn't over.

“Alfred,” he taps into his communicator quickly, his disguised voice growing even more distorted by the mask. “I need you to look into the files on Victor Fries’ cryogenic technology and how to restore the machine to its—”

There’s static on the end of the line. The Bat frowns; he specifically built his communication devices to be free of noise interference.

“Dammit,” he curses as he tries to open up the panel Thomas was typing on earlier, helplessly watching the heart wither still. “Dammit, Alfred, answer me!”

But the communication channel is filled with a quiet white noise that adds more dread on the Bat’s troubled conscious. And then it dawns on him: Thomas was speaking to someone earlier on the radio he held. 

He wouldn't fucking dare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cliffhanger? Cliffhanger. 
> 
> In honor of that stunt Tom King pulled on us a few days ago back in _Batman #39._


	11. To Perceive is to Suffer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A separation. A rescue of the heart. A revelation of weakness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An early update since I'll be gone for a week or two. 
> 
> Chapters will now be a little bit shorter so they feel like serrations and blocks.

 SHUTTING DOWN COMMUNICATIONS CHANNEL…

“I’m so sorry, Sir,” Alfred apologizes aloud as he watches his communicator window with Bruce disappear into the monitors.

Someone's hacking into the cave’s technology databases, and it isn’t Victor Stone’s signature coding structure. It’s someone different, someone new. A stranger, which means an enemy. If someone was able to enter the channel, they would have pinpointed the butler’s location underground. (Perhaps sometimes Bruce’s paranoia and constant warnings do save his life, though they make him seen a tad bit below the typical Arkham inmate.)

Alfred reroutes all of the extra power on the house’s defense structures and pray that they’ll be enough to defend him from the armed men marching upstairs. He brings up the hidden security cameras and cloaks their power sources, watching as the mercenaries who had broken into the house search each and every single nook and cranny, breaking a few of the living room ornaments in the process. 

They’re getting close to the elevator hidden behind the fireplace. All it takes is a single press of the third tile from the left of the mantle. There are three mercenaries around the area, scanning each and every single crack in the wall. Every single one of his nerves stand on edge, his breathing heavy and laden with anxiety, and it’s all alleviated by a simple beep of the computer.

He closes his eyes and thanks his poor soul that the power uploaded just in time.

Afterwards, he quickly types in multiple commands, and activates the security measures with the push of the confirmation key. He turns his attention to the security cameras in the house so he knows what he’s doing.

He sees the machinery working within the walls, shifting gears and churning metal. From the house’s ceiling, large guns carrying nonlethal rubber bullets drop down and begin to spew rounds across the mercenaries. The soldiers are caught off-guard and quickly disperse from the fireplace entrance to find places to hide, under the kitchen counter, or behind the leather sofa. The ammunition scatters across the house, bouncing off the bulletproof glass of walls and showering holes across the furniture and appliances that aren’t harder than wood.

But since two machine guns isn’t enough to effectively aim at them, Alfred activates two more, closing in on the spots that they hid in in order to at least hit one. A few fall unconscious while the remaining try their best to take down the turrets, and while they’re able to destroy only one, the dozens of them are littered out cold on the expensive and now-destroyed flooring by the time Alfred reloads the rounds digitally.

Quick to move to the other monitors, the butler reactivates the communications channel, and it takes much faster than it did when it was being taken down.

“Master Wayne?” Alfred speaks into the mic. “Apologies for my absence; the back-up reserves weren’t enough to activate the security and I had to reroute the channels’ power.”

A pause.

"Master Wayne?" Alfred tries again. "Are you there, Sir?"

“That took a while,” Bruce finally responds, panicked behind the voice modulator and gas mask, but it isn’t as bad as it was when he was cut off. “Did they find the cave?”

“No, Sir,” Alfred replies. “What is it that you required of me earlier?”

* * *

Against the loud sirens, he sighs in relief. At least the command input is activated, the Bat can check that off his list. But he still needs to learn how to boot up the machine using hacked coordinates, or Selina’s heart is going to stop beating within a few minutes. The button pad in his hands has various wires plugged into it, and the beeping chip he placed at its hard drive disk that allows his to bypass any additional security measures made by the machine.

Obviously, it’s Fries' design. There’s even a button that self-destructs the thing by encasing it in ice.

“Victor Fries’ cryogenic tech,” the Bat talks into his communicator. “Give me anything from the database on how to start his machinery.”

“Let’s see…” Alfred hums, probably scanning the files. “You’re looking at the keypad now, yes?”

“Yes.”

“You have to enable the password protocol before inputting the pin. Press zero and the activate button at the same time.”

He does it with one hand and two fingers.

“According to the blueprints,” Alfred continues, “there’s a timeout of ten seconds before the whole machine self-destructs. Once you press the asterisk button, you must input the pin code fast.”

“Is it the usual code of Fries?” the Bat flecks his fingers, readying them over the keypad.

“Yes, Sir. Except he added a zero at the end.”

The Bat closes his eyes, counts the time in his head, then hits the asterisk.

Four. Three. Three. Seven. Three. One. Nine. Six. Eight. Zero.

Once he hits the last button, he hears the gears at the back of the machine turn, letting its constant hum fill up the room’s silence, as the steam hisses out of the pipes and the various LED signals light up around it again. The liquid inside the heart’s chamber begins to bubble, and it pumps on, the meters above it spinning back to life. The warning of the sirens is no more.

“Alfred, I have her heart,” he says, the painful irony of those words sinking into his skin. “Contact Gotham General and tell their cardio surgeons that it has to be recovered from here. And send data on Fries’ blueprints so they can retrieve it properly.”

“Right away, Sir.”

The Bat walks up the glass of the chamber and presses his gloved hand to the surface, feeling the running of the bubbles and the echo of her heartbeat against the surface. And it’s almost like he’s reassured that, for once, he has her back in his life again, that he has her and she’s safe. He can never lose another person close to him, not again.  

“What about Master Elliot?” Alfred asks as the Bat locates the door that Thomas used as his escape.

“He’ll be taken care of,” the Bat replies, leaving the room, removing the gas mask from his mouth.

He tries not to let the rage get to him, but with Selina and Alfred’s lives threatened simultaneously, he can’t stop the indignation from brewing malevolently inside him.

* * *

He deducts he’s on the rooftop.

Or at least, that’s the only way that this escape route could go.

Once the Bat climbs up all of the stairs and reaches the top exit of Sacred Heart Hospital, in the dim light of midnight Gotham’s landscape, he sees Thomas reloading his pistol. A flurry of gunshots greet the Bat once he opens the door, and as Thomas empties out his magazine, the Bat dodges the bullets moving forward, aiming his grappling gun straight at the doctor. With a burst of air, the hook latches onto Thomas’ chest, and as he yells in pain at the wound, the Bat recalls the rope with the press of a button, reeling Thomas in towards him and punching him straight into the ground.

Thomas could only laugh despite his bleeding chest and nose, even as the Bat grabs him by the collar and flings him across the roof.

“You’ll pay for what you’ve done,” the Bat strides towards him, rage escaping through his grit teeth. “You’ll pay for _everything.”_

“I’m…not so sure about that,” Thomas smirks, still as cocky.

With no warning, the doctor pulls out a third gun from his coat and begins emptying out the rounds loaded inside it as he gets up. Some of them are deflected by the armor on the Bat’s chest as he charges towards Thomas, pinning his arm underneath his bicep to disarm him. But as the pistol skitters on the floor, Thomas whirls around, pulling out a fourth gun to point, but the Bat lands a precise strike on his elbow and his hand crumbles. The gun is kicked away, far from use.

“That’s enough,” the Bat warns him.

“No!” Thomas spits, a slim blade slipping out from his coat.

The Bat realizes he’s put his guard down too soon, and the consequence comes in a well-placed stab wound in his shoulder. He feels the pain come out of him in a grunt as Thomas uses his body weight to dig the knife deeper, twisting it slowly as he grabs his arm, desperately trying to pull it away.

“Weak,” Thomas hisses, “you’re still so _weak.”_

The Bat finally pushes him away, but Thomas comes back with another quick stab to his side too fast for him to see. The shadow drops to catch his wound, but he’s learned from his mistakes and doesn’t leave his side open, finding Thomas where he needs him. Like a wraith, he moves behind the doctor, attaching a hook to his leg; but he couldn’t follow through with the capture as Thomas yanks on his cape, pulling him off balance. The dagger finds itself imbedded into his calf, making him fall to his knees, while Thomas finishes him with a knee to his jaw. With the Bat groaning on the floor, his body, mind and lungs on fire due to everything that had happened within the past hour, he can’t get up in time before Thomas corners him.

“You’ll never know how truly disappointed I am, Bruce,” Thomas draws a fifth gun, pointing it straight at the Bat’s heart. “The past has never escaped the both of us. Sad to say nothing has changed.”

“You’re wrong,” the Bat returns. “Everything has changed.”

And with the press of a button in his hands, the hook on Thomas’ foot expands, wrapping his heels together as a small grappling hook latches onto the nearest overhead pillar. The doctor yells in anger as the ropes drag him to the wall, automatically binding him to the building as the cords snake around and tighten until he can only struggle in vain.

“No!” Thomas screams. “It can’t end like this, Bruce!”

The darkness groans as he gets up, limping towards Thomas, the knife wounds throbbing. Once the Bat is in front of him, they’re silent, Thomas’ teeth grinding in fury.

The Bat ignores the warning as he looks back to Thomas. “It’s over. Give up now.”

Thomas opens his mouth to retaliate, but suddenly, they’re both drenched in a white light overhead, accompanied by the growing sound of chopper blades. The Bat doesn’t shield his eyes as he looks up, the headlights of a helicopter branded by the seal of the police hovering over the building.

“This is the GCPD,” some man with a megaphone says to the both of them below. “Stand down or we will be forced to take legal action.”

The Bat is annoyed, but impressed. Gordon works faster these days, doesn’t he?

“You’re still so naïve, after all these years,” Thomas gloats, and it’s unbelievable that with him restrained and helpless, ready to be apprehended, he still can be. “Don’t you see? I’ve won.”

The Bat takes a few steps back so that Thomas is the only one illuminated by the spotlight. “From here, it looks like _you’re_ the one who’s lost.”

Thomas’ hands jerk towards him, his whole body trying to shake out of the ropes that tie him down. “You _idiot._ Does it look like I care that I’ll get captured? I’ve done what I had to do: I’ve exposed just how weak you are. I’ve proven that the scourge of Gotham, the fearsome Caped Crusader, can fall to his knees just as any mortal can.”

The Bat narrows his eyes, not wanting to admit just how those words ring painful truths. “I’ll find every possible way to defeat you. You’ll never win.”

“Don’t you see?” Thomas smiles cruelly, the helicopter beginning to descend upon him, solidifying his defeat. “The moment Selina walked into your life, I had already won.”

The Bat clenches his jaw, and when the police finally land, Thomas could no longer sense him in the dark. He had crawled back into the shadows, back into the cold unfeeling darkness to disappear, to flee away from the truth he had always tried running away from. And as the GCPD spill out from the chopper, pistols pointed at Thomas, untying him from the pillar and striking him down, he knows that he walks out of this victorious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was also thinking that I should make a collection of BatCat drabbles that take place after this in the DCEU with the occasional request taking, so please tell me what you’d think about that sort of idea!


	12. Selfishness Does Not Consist in a Love to Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A supporter. A revelation. An awakening.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been dying to write this chapter since the moment I started this fic. It’s one of my favorite BatCat moments, in all their extensive history spanning every single form of media I could think of. It just hits the right strings, and is so painfully heartfelt that it keeps me coming back to this ship.
> 
> If you’ve read _Heart of Hush,_ you’d know which scene I’m talking about.
> 
> Some of that dialogue I reworded, but most of it I had to keep verbatim because Paul Dini captured that moment so perfectly that it couldn’t be described in any other way.

Block C of Blackgate is a dynamite house of a building, just ready to explode, with all kinds of inmates from all walks of life, ready to unleash hell of the city. But Gordon had been Gotham’s GCPD Commissioner for nearly two decades, and the intimidation tactic and reputation preceded the whole prison. Besides, he’s got himself one hell of a clean-up partner (if, really, he could be called a partner).

The night sky of Gotham looks better from afar, he thinks, standing on the rooftop of Block C as he lights his fourth cigarette of the night. The recon chopper he had sent out at the Bat’s phone call had captured the menace, thank God. Once he heard the news of Selina Kyle confined over at the old abandoned Sacred Heart, he knew the Bat would come calling the moment he got word. No doubt Gordon wouldn’t be praised for acting early, but at least he’d be appreciated for being a step ahead.

The culprit of the whole ordeal, according to O’Hara’s report, isn’t a new face, even though he had apparently surgically altered his appearance to look like that of Bruce Wayne, in some kind of twisted charade. His thumbprints identify him as Thomas Elliot, forty-four years of age, more medical degrees than Gordon has stars, just as mad as every single man in Arkham. He’s probably prepping for his mug shot now.

Gordon can laugh, really; it’s not like he’d get a case like this every day, one that would strike the Bat on a level more than personal.

The Commissioner might be called an idiot by half of Gotham, by every single crook roaming the streets for believing in the Bat, but he knows for a fact that behind the brooding and the bat motifs is a man trying to do something right for this screwed-up city. And like every man, he has a weakness, even though he wouldn’t want to admit it.

He remembers when they were still quite young, both of them learning, cutting into the crime of Gotham and taking out villain after villain that would pop up each week. But his hunch was right: that every time that the cat burglar Selina Kyle would stir up the littlest of mayhems, the Bat would always find the smallest of loopholes or inconveniences to let her slip away. Of course, Gordon had always been under the impression that it was one of those typical schoolboy crushes, but he predicted it had grown more than that right under his nose.

He would never dig under the Bat’s skin; he fears for his life too much to take dangerous risks like that. But maybe there really are nights like these when the time’s right to really put it out there.

He grinds his cigarette with a heel, and the darkness stirs from behind him.

“You’re right on schedule,” Gordon continues to look out into the distance, but he feels that looming presence build up behind him. “They’re locking Elliot up in a cell far, far away from where he can do any extra damage. His mercenaries and med associates have been taken care of too. Sacred Heart’s pretty much abandoned again.”

“Good,” the darkness growls, but it doesn’t have that tone that would normally strike fear into criminals; it sounds strangely genuine. “Is she okay?”

Gordon turns halfway, and he sees the figure of the Bat there, his expression unreadable, but his stance clues the Commissioner in that he’s been injured in some sort of brawl.

“Paramedics picked her body up and transferred her to Gotham General half an hour ago,” Gordon answers, digging his hands into his coat pockets. “They have her heart, too. Last time I checked, they were already getting her ready for an operation.”

The Bat nods, and Gordon turns to face him directly. There’s a shift in his usual scowl; he seems much more…vulnerable, if that’s even a word that’s used to describe him. Through the gaps in his cape, he sees splatters of blood on his suit, cuts and painful wounds, his lungs heaving heavily, like he’s been holding his breath for too long.

“Thank you, Jim,” the Bat says, and he turns to disappear.

“Wait,” Gordon halts him, and the Bat moves his head to look at him; the Commissioner tastes the words on his tongue, careful when he says them.

“Look, I don’t know what it is, but it’s pretty damn obvious you feel something for her.”

The Bat stops; if anything, his expression seems to soften for a split second.

“I know it’s just my opinion,” Gordon can’t stop the words now, but if he’ll be killed for them, so be it, “but I think if you really loved her, this is one helluva way to show it. And I don’t care if she was an old flame of Bruce Wayne, or whatever the media wants to shove down my throat nowadays. She means a lot to you, and I respect that.”

The message sinks into their skins, the breeze cold against the comfort of Gordon’s words.

“For once, I don’t care who you are under that mask,” Gordon finishes. “What’s important is that tonight, I’ve seen just seen the person really you are: the kind of man who would risk life and limb for someone he loves. Given what you had to go through, it ain’t easy. And you saved her.”

The Bat takes in a breath, and seems to blend into the darkness, even in the way the hem of his cape shifts. “You’re wrong, Jim. Tonight, _she_ saved me.”

Gordon can’t help but smile and shake his head, turning back to enjoy his view of Gotham’s skyline. From his pockets, he fishes out a cigarette and lights it, puffing out his first draw. He doesn’t need to look back to know that the Bat had dissipated into the shadows.

* * *

Bruce suppresses a grunt as Alfred places pressure onto the wound, finally securing gauze onto the wound at his side. The knife sutures, painful memories of Elliot, seem to restrict his movement every time he so much as turns his torso around to reach for something; even walking seems hard with the large wound in his calf. His bedroom had never felt this cold before in the dawn, never this empty or devoid of feeling.

“Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce says almost pathetically, sitting on his bed. He tries to reach for a shirt, but the pain in his chest stops him.

Alfred is about to pick up his tray and walk out but he watches him curiously, then drops what he’s holding to carefully guide Bruce’s arms through the holes, before leaving him to button it up by himself. Alfred winds up the remaining gauze strips, his back turned to him.

“I was listening to that conversation you had with Master Elliot earlier this evening,” the butler says solemnly. “And the one you had with Gordon.”

Bruce shuts his eyes, wiping his tired face with his free arm. “They’re right.”

Alfred turns to him.

“They’re both right,” Bruce gets up and hangs his weight on his desk, staring at himself through his bedroom mirror, seeing nothing else but a broken man far from what he knew himself to be. “I spent so much time thinking about how I should avoid her that I’ve forgotten just how much she means to me. I saw her as a weakness I needed to get rid of, when she really made me who I am. I overlooked all of that, and now…”

Alfred can only stand stoically, silent and sure, packing up his medical tray as he locks eyes with Bruce through the reflection on the glass. It’s so obvious they’re both tired, both fatigued with the constant darkness that surrounded them, that maybe their violent reaction to her coming back into their lives seemed to lift that, if only for a moment.  

“I’ll ask you again, Master Wayne,” Alfred says carefully, “are you afraid of what she makes you feel?”

Bruce clenches his fists in a unique calm sort of way, sighing his answer as he feels the weight roll off his shoulders. “Yes. I’m afraid.”

Alfred looks down at his feet, his nod incredibly miniscule as Bruce continues.

“I’m so afraid, Alfred,” the words spill, pent up for how many years of brooding and self-inflicted torture. “That I’d hurt her, that she’d end up bringing pain to herself because of me, that I’d end up defenseless because of her…” he hangs his head, unable to stare himself in the face, “and now, look at me. I’m weak.”

There’s a breath of a silence, the early morning light gracing the room gently.

“You’re not, Sir.”

Bruce turns back to look at Alfred, standing there, unwavering after all the toll these hard years have taken on the both of them; in so many ways, his butler is stronger than he’ll ever be.

“She hasn’t made you weak,” ever so slowly, Alfred shakes his head. “She’s made you human. And that’s the strongest thing you can ever be.”

Bruce releases his aggression with an exhale, and he can feel himself smile. In retrospect, it’s all true; if it wasn’t for her, if she never came into his life, if he didn’t have her and numerous Robins and Batgirls and information broker butlers, then he would be just like the criminals he’d been trying to eradicate for twenty years: alone, ruthless, a monster in search of something more than himself. And Selina had always been a part of that, without him even recognizing the slightest bit of that presence in his life.

“Though Master Elliot was wrong about many things,” Alfred quotes, “he was right to acknowledge that proverbs have wisdom. ‘We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; in feelings, not in figures on a dial; we should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.’”

There’s a smile creeping up on his face. “Aristotle?”

“Not quite,” Alfred corrects, handing him a trench coat. “Philip James Bailey.”

Bruce takes the jacket and dons it, cautious as not to rip his stitches.

“I received word from Gordon about a few hours ago,” Alfred says. “He told me the operation was a success, and that Miss Kyle is perfectly healthy. She’s currently at in a comatose state at the ICU.”

The smile slowly vanishes off Bruce’s face as he slips his feet into his oxford shoes.

“Will you be going somewhere, Sir?” Alfred asks.

“Gotham General Hospital,” Bruce fixes the lapels as he grabs a red scarf hanging over his armchair, wrapping it around his neck. “You wouldn’t know the visiting hours, would you?”

“They begin at seven.”

Bruce looks at the hands on his Patek Philippe watch before putting it on his wrist. 6:46 AM.

“I’ll take the Jaguar,” Bruce says, walking out of the room.

“Might I recommend you buy her flowers?” Alfred requests, and Bruce waves his hand in acknowledgement.

* * *

He knew he shouldn’t have entered the hospital lobby. There are already some photographers and journalists waiting for him, ready to interview him for a cheap scoop on the business and entertainment sections of the local news. The moment he walks through the doors, questions too alike to be considered separate queries fly past him: what’s his real connection to the cat burglar Selina Kyle? Did they really have a fling in the past? What will happen now to his already broken relationship with Jezebel Jet?

He pushes through the small crowd, faking a smile through the photos as he refuses to answer any questions, but he’s getting too tired of the flashing lights. A terrible night with Thomas Elliot’s threats, coupled with an unpleasant morning like this…it’s a surprise he’s still standing, after so many years.

“Hey!” someone from the back yells. “Stop leeching off the poor man and just let him do his business here, yeah?”

The crowd reluctantly parts then disperses, revealing a familiar figure intimidating what’s left of the reporters. Bruce could only feel the relief escape him in a sigh.

“Commissioner Gordon,” Bruce greets quite surprised, giving him a firm handshake.

“Morning, Mr. Wayne,” Gordon walks him over to the elevator, pressing the button to go up; he follows the Commissioner’s gaze toward the flowers he held in his hand. “I assume you’re here to visit your lady friend.”

Bruce looks at the bouquet of roses in his hand, nods, and tries his best to feign naiveté. “Yeah.”

“You don’t mind if I walk with you, do you?”

“Not at all, no,” Bruce watches the elevator floors on the dial descend towards them.

There’s a pause, and Bruce can practically feel Gordon’s tasting his words.

“What happened to her was…” Gordon’s at a loss for words, gesturing to try and summon them towards him, “yeah, ‘horrible’ doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“I had no idea what happened,” Bruce fabricates. “I just got the phone call this morning about the accident, and I…” he pauses, pinching the bridge of his nose with his free hand, “…I just…I didn’t know.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Gordon pockets his hands. “None of us knew it was coming. We couldn’t have prevented it either way.”

Bruce could disagree with that, but he keeps his mouth shut as the elevator opens before them. The two men step in, and once Gordon hits a button, the doors seal them as they begin to ascend.

“She’s fine, by the way,” Gordon says after a moment of silence. “The doctors said she has a healthy pulse and blood rate, leading to a high chance of recovery. But they aren’t too sure she’ll be able to run across rooftops and dive off buildings anytime soon, coming out of a condition like that.”

Bruce feels the regret beginning to seep into his skin.

“You know, if I were you,” Gordon crosses his arms, “you should be thanking the Batman.”

Bruce blinks. “Really? The Bat?”

“If it wasn’t for him, she wouldn’t have survived. He was the one who got her heart back from the maniac who operated it out of her body. I know you’re not the type to believe in people like him, but he _did_ just do you a huge favor.”

“Mm,” Bruce presses his lips together.

The elevator stops at the 9th floor before either of them could speak. Gordon leads Bruce across the rooms, past the nurses and doctors and patients in hospital robes to room number 909. The folder outside spells her name in bold letters, a testament to her resilience even in such a state.

KYLE, SELINA MARIA C.

“You’d probably want to make this visit alone,” Gordon says. “I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thank you, Commissioner,” Bruce replies, and Gordon gives him a smile in response before disappearing down the corridor.

Bruce, amongst the morning crowd of the hospital, tries to muster up all of the confidence in him, and he lands three gentle knocks on the door with a knuckle, waiting a few agonizing seconds before letting himself enter.

Once he’s inside, he presses his back to the door, finding himself in a sterile white room that always seemed to be humming. The morning light from the windows is cold, even despite its best efforts to cloak the room in warmth, yet the blinds do little to prevent it from entering. His shoes make noisy clicks on the tiled flooring, and when he sees her body on the bed, a strange feeling overtakes him; whether it’s relief or worry, he doesn’t know.

“Selina…” he sighs again.

He approaches her bed carefully, watching her figure come into view against the white sheets and pillows. Her body is camouflaged against the bed in a matching hospital gown, and the rest of her from the shoulders down is covered by a soft blanket. The rhythm of the IV dripping into the wires attached to various parts of her arm, a heart monitor beside her beeping in a constant and healthy beat.

Placing the roses on the nightstand, he runs a hand over her forehead gently, brushing stray locks of her short hair from her face. She looks so peaceful while she’s asleep, calm and unable to feel pain, sad but gorgeous.

He eases himself down on the chair next to the bed, looking blankly at the wall as the confession presses against his tongue. And as he scans his words, he realizes just how much had been pent up inside him, how much he truly feels for her. It’s hard for him to phrase everything running through his mind, but she’s asleep and she’ll never really know what he feels, something he’d like to keep that way.

Even though he so badly wants to let her into his life again.

He has to say it. He owes it to her, to himself.

“Last night,” he begins, “I looked into a mirror and saw what I never wanted to see myself become: a monster who didn’t want to feel anything for the sake of strength. An unemotional demon consumed by greed and selfishness. I don’t know how I can apologize for what Elliot did to you. I never meant for you to get hurt, just because of me.”

He allows himself a moment to breathe. The fact that the silence continues to reply to him gives him a little bit more comfort.

“Thomas said that if I watched your heart die, a part of mine would die too,” he continues, shutting his eyes. “He was right, in a way. It’s taken me too long to admit that there’s only been one person who ever held my heart.”

It’s still not enough. The silence seems to abandon him, but it doesn’t feel as bad as it used to.

“There’s a part of me that makes me feel so vulnerable,” he can’t stop the words now, clutching his hands in his lap. “I closed that part off when my parents died. It hurt too much to expose to anyone. And yet…despite all these walls I put around myself, you were able to break in. You were the first to ever touch my heart and remind me I still had one.”

He gets up slowly, fixing the lapels of his coat, his eyes downcast. “I was wrong to throw you away so thoughtlessly in the past. I was wrong to ever detach myself from you, to ignore whatever you made me feel. I don’t know where we’ll go from here. I don’t know if we could go back to the way things were, or if we could have more than what we used to have. I don’t know if you’ll even want me back, after what’s happened. But I’m sure of one thing: no matter what happens, no matter where life takes us…”

And as he looks back at her sleeping face, he’s never felt as satisfied with being as helpless as he has now. “I’ll always love you.”

He bends over the bed, careful to not let his scarf touch her body, and presses a soft kiss on her forehead.

He stands up straight, takes one last look at her and tries to immortalize just how much she means to him, then turns his back and walks back towards the door. For once, he can go back home solemn, content with his emotions and at peace with the closure that the culmination of these events have led to. His hand is about to reach the doorknob.

“I’m awake.”

He turns his head back, and he sees her eyes slightly open. She’s smiling so beautifully it hurts.

“Since when?” he asks, the fact that she could have heard every single word suddenly sinking into his skin.

“Since ‘Selina,’” she grins.


	13. Love is a Single Soul Dwelling in Two Bodies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An evening of reconsideration. A morning of acceptance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A warning for some implied sexual content.
> 
> I've thought about it long and hard, and this thing is getting a sequel. It's not going to be as BatCat centered, but it's still gonna have some threads of this couple in it, and a whole new set of characters. Stay tuned for that.
> 
> That being said, thanks so much for sticking around my first ever DC story! All of you are the best and I hope to write more for this lovely couple in the future.

She unlocks her door, switches on the lights, and the first thing she’s greeted by are her lovely darlings crowding by the welcome mat inside her house, probably thanking her for their early dinner that evening. She smiles as they wrap around her legs and meow in welcome, but they begin to cower away and hiss at the stranger that follows in after her.

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that,” she reprimands the cats as she closes the door behind her guest. “Bruce is a friend.”

“I don’t think they like me very much,” he disagrees, hanging his coat on the rack together with his scarf.

“Great work, detective,” she returns, then turns to the litter and gently ushers them away with a few hand gestures. “Go on, shoo. You all have better things to do.”

And the cats disperse, most of them highly unamused by the new object of her affections in the room with them.

“This is your old apartment,” he looks around, helping her take off her coat, the large beige one that used to belong to him. “Someone keep it warm for you while you were away?”

“My friend Holly—you know Holly—lived here with her girlfriend Karon when I left,” she explains, walking towards her kitchen counter. “It was my parting gift to them. A few months back, they were able to get their hands on some better apartment close to midtown. But they still have the deed to this place.”

He loosens his tie and unknots it with a hand, following her towards the counter.

“What do you want to drink?” she turns her back to him as she opens her fridge. “I got a couple of beers and champagne here. No wine, though; sorry I still can’t afford to get those Chateau Margeaux that you’re fond of.”

“It’s on the top of your refrigerator.”

She gives a wry grin away from his view, as she reaches up above the fridge to bring down one of his Chateau Margaux bottles, already opened.

“I don’t know how you do it,” she admits her defeat, shaking her head. She brings up two wine glasses from a cabinet then begins to pour them a quarter of the way to the top.

He raises his glass. “Your eyes were on that area since you walked into the room."

She smiles, then lifts hers as well. The glasses make a pleasant sound as they clink, and the two of them simultaneously drink less than five sips.

Putting down her drink first, she takes a few seconds to absorb his appearance next to her; his tie is gone and so is his blazer, both of which had been placed neatly on her counter. His neatly pressed dress shirt had the first four buttons undone, revealing further the skin and lines of his chest and neck behind the creases of his clothing. As he moves, she can practically feel his muscles move against her touch, the raw strength of his body—

He looks back at her. She quickly averts her gaze.

“Something wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing,” she retorts, suddenly aware of how hot her face is.

They’re silent, and it’s comfortable. On the counter, his hands are so close to hers.

“I’ve been thinking,” she says, her eyes on the wine in her glass.

“About what?” he asks.

“About Gotham. Whether I should leave or not.”

He pauses, as if he’s calculating something (but then again, he’s always calculating something). “And?”

“I don’t know,” she admits, shaking her head, her patched heart pounding inside her chest; the doctors kept repeating that she has to be careful that her pulse doesn’t beat too fast, or the sutures will burst. “I really don’t know, I just feel…that there’s nothing left. Look at me: I can’t run too fast, go down stairs without someone holding onto me…hell, I can’t even breathe without _that_ being measured. I’m no better than some old lady down in ICU. I know the physical therapy’s supposed to help me up back on my feet, but this rate, Catwoman’s as good as gone. Sooner or later, she’ll just be some story parents would tell their kids about the crime-ridden age of this city.”

She knows he’s watching her. She’s afraid to look into his eyes.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful I’m alive, but…” she dips her head, clenching her fist as she fights the ache that’s welling up inside her throat, “I mean, I’ve already walked away from this city once. What good is there left for me here? Why should I even stay?”

A moment of quiet passes over them, and it doesn't feel as comfortable as before.

She feels the warmth of his hand lift her head up until she’s facing him, their lips an inch away from each other, the smell of the wine from both their mouths mingling in the empty space between them. Her breath is stolen once their eyes lock, and she swears that it could’ve been a different man, but it wasn’t; it could’ve been another nameless European fling, but it wasn’t. It’s only a gaze that she’s waited more than decades to see, coming from eyes that she swore she’d only find in her dreams.

It doesn’t take long before he leans in and presses his mouth to hers.

The taste of him is something so distant and yet so familiar she swear she could drown in it if she wanted to. He’s answered the question without even speaking a single word, and she repeats to herself constantly as he kisses her, again and again and again: _what a damaged, beautiful man._

* * *

He wakes up, and it comes to him slowly. The bed isn’t his, the room isn’t his. There’s a strange kind of warmth in the empty sheets beside him. Morning light is spilling in, cascading over the floors and pillows, and the digital bedside clock reads 7:43 AM; he can practically hear the traffic slowly build up outside. Parts of his body ache, and there are a few seconds where he thinks it’s the scars ripping open again.

“Morning, handsome.”

He turns his head and finds her standing by the window, a mug of something warm in her hands. Her short hair sticks up in a messy and yet charming way, the glow of the sunlight outlining her figure in gold. There’s only half of her face turned to him, the other side looking out into the Gotham streets; the bare skin of her legs and feet lean against the wall, while his loose dress shirt hangs around her shoulders, the first four buttons still undone. He sees the scar on her sternum and the pang of guilt hits him again.

He sits up, and he’s careful not to let any groans escape him as his muscles stretch slowly. She puts down her drink on the windowsill and turns to him, the vibrant green of her eyes still catching him off-guard.

“You know, for an old man,” she says, approaching him, “you still aren’t that bad.”

“Was I ever bad?” he asks, suddenly aware of the hoarseness of his voice.

“Mmm…” she hums, wrapping her arms around his neck as she straddles him. “Can’t say you really were.”

Their bodies are close enough for him to feel her broken heartbeat. He breathes her in for a while. She smells like coffee.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters.

She sighs. “Within the last three months, how many times have you said that?”

“I don’t care,” he looks up into her green eyes. “I mean it every time.”

He sees the corner of her lips turn up in a sad smile. “Bruce…”

“Every night, I go to sleep thinking about what would’ve happened if Thomas succeeded. If I wasn’t quick enough, fast enough, if I didn’t think the situation through, if things turned out different…what would’ve happened to you? And I realize that I could’ve lost you, Selina. I could’ve lost you and would’ve kept denying it, I wouldn’t kn—”

“Bruce, look at me.”

He slowly gazes up at her, and the love in her eyes is more than he could ever deserve. She cups his face with her hands and presses their foreheads together.

“I’m here, okay?” she says softly. “I’m _here._ I’m with you.”

They don’t say anything. They don’t have to.

He doesn’t know when they start kissing. He suddenly finds himself gasping for air between their lips, his hands in her hair as she begins to trace the scars along his chest. He coaxes moans from her, moving his fingers down her nape along her waist, settling there as she uses his nape to press them closer together. He feels a guttural sound brew at the bottom of his throat and it escapes him without his knowledge, earning a laugh from her. His lips slowly leave and move down her neck as she gasps, her hands at his back, pulling him closer to her as she—

A phone rings on the table.

She sighs and shuts her eyes, trying to hide her frustration as she gets up from him gradually, offering him an apologetic smile. Her frown as she goes off in the direction of the ringing is actually kind of adorable, he thinks to himself; however, the furrow in her brow vanishes once she recognizes the caller and swipes her thumb to the right.

“Hey, Al,” she greets, smiling off into the distance.

Whatever grin was on his face is wiped off.

_She has Alfred’s number?_

“Yeah, yeah, he’s here,” she says, glancing over at Bruce, giving off a sly look. “Oh, yes, the night was _very_ enjoyable, thank you.”

He flashes her an exasperated look. She bites down her laughter.

“Don’t worry, the doctors said three months is enough time,” she speaks back into the phone. “Why’d you call?”

There’s a long pause as Alfred seems to explain to her something rather lengthy. She puts her thumb in between her lips as she mutters numerous okays and thanks into the phone. He observes the little nonverbal movements from her with incredibly scrutiny, trying to find out what they were talking about simply from her body language. Had they been planning something without him? Did she and Alfred conspire for a plan that they thought he was unaware of?

“So it’s been emptied?” she asks, her grin widening. “That’s really great; thanks, Al. No…no, it isn’t gonna be all for me. I’m planning on splitting it evenly with some people I know might need it.”

_So…money. They’re talking about money._

She lets out a few bits of laughter. “You know me so well, don’t you? You’re lucky I’ve learned to share while I was away. I’ll check my bank account later. Yes, the Catherina one.”

_There’s talk of a bank, now. And accounts._

“Sure…” she nods, “sure, sure. Thanks again. You’re the best, Alfred.”

And with that, she hangs up.

“Digitally stealing money now, are we?” his eyebrows arc as she puts her phone back down.

“For a good cause, this time,” she returns, crossing her arms.

He gets up from the bed slowly. “Really?”

“With Doctor Elliot’s thumb prints now in the GCPD database, your hacking tech can unlock all the doors he’s shut. So I’ve asked Alfred if he could check into those bank accounts holding his precious family fortune. I knew that was the source of all his power and influence, so I decided to separate him from it as fast as he could.”

“So you drained it. Transferred all of that cash to your own accounts.”

She opens her mouth as if to disagree with him, but then shut it and shrugged with a mischievous grin. “Well, only _most_ of it’s going to me.”

“The rest?”

“Animal shelters, orphanages, a few hospitals…the list could go on. It’s a lot of money.”

He doesn’t want to admit that he’s rather impressed.

“He can hate me as much as he wants to. But after this, he’s gotta admit that I’m a master thief, even after what he’s done to me.” She scoffs, half sad and half proud. “How’s _that_ for a ‘gutter slut’, huh?”

He exhales slowly. “You know all those things he said about you aren’t true.”

“I know. But still, is boasting about your victories really so bad?”

He supposes that it really isn’t.

She opens her arms wide, her look expectant. He can only give a ghost of a smile as they hug, sharing their warmth, their heartbeats. She snuggles herself into his chest as he presses a kiss to her forehead. In that embrace, enveloped in the morning light, he feels vulnerable, so utterly human; and for that brief moment, he’s satisfied being so.


End file.
